Patterns and Functions of Code-Switching and Teachers’ Professional Role Identity in Multilingual EFL Classrooms: A Quasi-Experimental Study in a Public Sector University of Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract

The paper explores code-switching patterns and roles and how it is used in multilingual English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, as well as the relationships between these practices and professional role enactment by instructors working in public universities in the Sindh province, Pakistan. Though English is used as the official media of instruction, Urdu and Sindhi are commonly used as common medium of communication during classroom interaction. Using the quasi-experimental pre- and post-observation design, 24 classroom sessions were observed in six EFL teachers before and after a two-month long pedagogical intervention aimed at increasing the awareness of functional code-switching and role based instructional use of language. Frequency, direction and functional distribution of teacher and student-initiated code-switching were also recorded by use of a structured observation protocol and session based rating scales that included the factors of instructional clarity, interactional engagement and understanding of tasks. The quantitative results indicated that management-driven and habitual code-switching decreased statistically significantly and clarification-based switching increased accordingly. The results of the paired-sample t-test showed that there was a significant change in the instructional performance, student participation, and understanding of the task (p < .01) with large effect sizes. A discourse analysis of six observation protocols revealed the change of managerial role enactment to the facilitative and supportive identity positioning. The results prove that code-switching on multilingual EFL classrooms is not only patterned but also functional and is directly connected with the professional role identity of the teacher, not with the compensatory linguistic behavior. The research provides empirical evidence of classroom-based research in Pakistani higher education to the research on multilingual pedagogy and teacher identity.