‘You can speak German, sir’: on the complexity of teachers' L1 use in CLIL

Abstract

Classroom code switching in foreign language teaching is still a controversial issue whose status as a tool of both despair and desire continues to be hotly debated. As the teaching of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is, by definition, concerned with the learning of a foreign language, one would expect the value of code switching to constitute an important part in CLIL research. This paper sets out to argue that the use of the majority language in CLIL by teachers follows an educationally principled approach. It is expressed within an instructive and regulative register, motivated by behavioural, classroom and task management, and knowledge scaffolding considerations. Through a comparative data coding process using MAXQDA, several dimensions of code switching were identified and elaborated on. These dimensions included principledness, contextualisation, conflictuality, domain sensibility, linguistic deficit awareness, language learning, and knowledge construction support, as well as affectivity. Taking this complex web as a reference point, the paper ends proposing six theses on code switching and recommending its relevance to CLIL teacher training.

Keywords:

• CLIL
• code switching
• instructive register
• regulative register
• educational principles

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to Christiane Dalton-Puffer, David Lasagabaster, Ernesto Macaro, Tom Morton, and Thomas Wagner for their critical comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. When authors used the word mother tongue into was not changed into majority language. Otherwise, majority language was preferred by the researcher to mother tongue. As a matter of fact, there were often representatives of many different mother tongues present in the classrooms in this study.

2. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer who made me consider the role of code switching within the broader picture of the language of schooling more carefully.

3. Austria has a two-tiered educational system where students at the age of 10 are (self) selected into a more academically focused branch (grammar school) and a more vocationally focused branch (comprehensive schools). This selection process is mostly affected by learners' marks in primary education.

4. MAXQDA is a professional software for qualitative and mixed methods data analysis, www.maxqda.com.

5. The translations of the code switchings tried to stay as closely to the original as possible and were done by the author and put in square brackets [translation]. For better readability the whole exchanges were italicised and the code switchings printed in bold. Seemingly redundant remarks such as repetitions, hesitation markers, digressions, etc. were deleted from the quotes which are indicated by three dots in round brackets (…).

6. See extracts 10 and 11.

7. This was also observed by Hüttner and Dalton-Puffer (2013) and Nikula (2010).

8. The original quote is, ‘how and when does code switching best lead to language learning’ (Macaro, 2005, 81).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the University College of Education of Upper Austria [grant number BmUKK-11.000/0003-III/PH,PE-LP/2012].