Codeswitching: Linguistic and literacy understanding of teaching dilemmas in multilingual classrooms

Abstract

This paper offers a linguistic background on what codeswitching (CS) is, as well as compar-ative models of accounting for it. The linguistic and sociolinguistic accounts are followedby a synthesis of the existing research on educational uses of CS, in both foreign language(FL), second language learning, and multilingual content area classrooms. Finally, the paperoffers a recommendation based on the research synthesis and anchored in observationaldata from South African classrooms in the Western Cape region. The recommendation callsfor careful adoption of linguistic ecology in classrooms.