Reasons for Teachers' Code-switching in EFL Classrooms

Bilingual or multilingual People tend to use twolanguages or more during the same conversation.This shift between the languages is known ascode-switching (Wardhaugh, 2006). Egypt is anexample of those countries where students mayuse their mother tongue (Arabic) while studyingEnglish as a foreign language. In Egypt,although teachers adhere to use English onlyinside the EFL classroom, some of them mayuse Arabic words or short sentences for differentreasons. This code-switching from English intoArabic and vice versa may affect the students’acquisition of the English language. In thisresearch, we are going to identify the reasons forcode switching. Some teachers of English athigh schools in Egypt filled up an onlinequestionnaire and were interviewed as well. Theresults may help to identify the reasons behindcode-switching made by these teachers in thatcommunity. Moreover, the study presented someways suggested by the teachers to benefit fromcode-switching in the EFL classroom.