ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE CODE-SWITCHING IN BILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT AT AN ENGLISH CENTER IN HO CHI MINH CITY

Abstract

English-Vietnamese code-switching (CS) has become a popular linguistic phenomenon in educational settings, particularly in Vietnam and other countries where English is taught as a foreign language. Despite not being widely supported by educators, many believe that CS plays an integral part in teaching English. This study was conducted at a bilingual educational environment, Thiên Ân English Center (TAEC), to identify the forms of classroom CS applied by teachers, contextual factors affecting CS usage, and teachers' reasons and evaluations of their use. The study used a qualitative method, using eight classroom observations and two interviews with two teacher participants. The results showed that CS at the inter- sentential level, including English-Vietnamese translation, was the most preferred form among participants, compared to intra-sentential and extra-sentential CS. Five contextual factors affecting teachers' use of CS at TAEC included teaching time constraints, students' English proficiency levels, cultural factors, teacher evaluation systems, and teacher cognitive ability. Also, the study found that CS was viewed as a scaffolding technique for teachers to give instructions, provide further details, facilitate students' second language (L2) understanding, enhance their learning new words, verify their comprehension, highlight the transition, and maintain exchanges between teachers and students. Using classroom English-Vietnamese allowed teachers to support students in eliciting expected answers to international English assessments and think on their feet in communicative contexts. The presence of CS also contributed to a positive and friendly learning environment at TAEC. However, limitations, such as the small sample size and limited time of collecting data, suggest that future researchers should implement further studies on using classroom English-Vietnamese CS in the future to continually reinforce the importance of applying this linguistic phenomenon in educational settings.