seeking help with code switching

Pete Farruggio (pfarr who-is-at uclink.berkeley.edu)
Fri, 27 Oct 1995 03:53:51 -0800

I'm doing some classroom research in my Spanish bilingual 5/6th grade
combination class. I have noticed an interesting form of code switching
which I'd like to investigate, but I don't have a theoretical frame to hang
it on. Maybe some of you xmca'ers can give me some ideas or leads...

I use a lit-based approach for the formal language arts program (Spanish in
the morning, English in the PM), and I meet with each reading group in a
circle for about 30 minutes to review chapter summaries and talk about the
book they're reading. In the more advanced Spanish reading group (all 6th
graders), several of the balanced bilinguals switch into English during the
discussions. These discussions are held exclusively in Spanish, and both I
and the more Spanish dominant kids stay in Spanish throughout. It seems
that as we answer their English comments with Spanish, the balanced
switchers come back into Spanish. I'm an experienced bilingual teacher,
and I know how to model the target language (in this case spanish) without
disrupting the discourse flow. We accept their English comments as a
normal part of the discussion and just keep on going.

This is definitely not crutching, and the English switch is not based on
lexical units (for example, using English words for which they don't know
the Spanish equivalent), it's whole big chunks of discourse, several
sentences or even paragraphs if written down. These kids were born here or
in Mexico, and raised in Spanish speaking homes. All communication with
the parents is in Spanish, but older siblings often talk with them in
English. I'm re-listening to some taped sessions, but this has been going
on in my class for at least five years. It seems to be something
psycho-social, I think they mostly do it on an affective level, like for
expressing strong opinions and for taking the discussion off the topic that
I'm trying to impose.

In reviewing the literature on code-switching I'm mostly turning up
language based examples of switching back to the mother tongue. does
anyone know of research similar to what I'm describing?

Pete Farruggio
Oakland, CA
UC Berkeley