Q&A with Professor Su-Hie Ting
In this Q&A post, Professor Su-Hie Ting, from the Faculty of Language and Communication, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), discusses code-switching in a language and communication classroom. Our questions were formed based on her published work in the area of strategic competence and code-switching, as well as the observed increase of multilingual students in our classrooms. Her publications may be referred to here.
SoTL Matters: How can developing strategic competence in using English for communication in an EAP classroom impact academic communication in other educational settings or environment?
Prof Ting: Strategic competence refers to the ability to use communication strategies – either to solve communication problems or to enhance the message. Examples of commonly used communication strategies are language-switching, restructuring of messages and repetition. The communication strategies that are not useful are message abandonment and message reduction because we cannot convey the meanings we originally intend to convey. When one develops strategic competence, it is applicable to all situations – not specific to an EAP situation. In other words, if communication strategy training is given to students, they should be able to use their available linguistic resources to communicate better, or at least to overcome gaps in communication whenever they talk.
SoTL Matters: From a pedagogical perspective, to what extent should code-switching be enabled or encouraged in an EAP or communication course?
Prof Ting: Code-switching is often frowned upon from a conventional pedagogical perspective. However, code-switching has recently been conceptualised as the ‘translanguaging approach to bilingualism’ (Swartz, 2018). Translanguaging is different from code-switching because ‘[t]ranslanguaging takes as its starting point the language practices of bilingual people as the norm, and not the language of monolinguals (García, 2011, p. 1). The translanguaging approach has been found to bring benefits to children but I have to say that I am still conventional in my view on code-switching in academic contexts. In an EAP or communication course, extensive use of code-switching may not be appropriate because our purpose is to enable students to communicate their thoughts in English, whether in spoken or written form. Some code-switching is alright because the seamless co-construction of meaning in two or more languages (Mård-Miettinen et al., 2018; Mifsud & Vella, 2018) make learners feel comfortable communicating with their instructors (Prošić-Santovac & Radović, 2018),
SoTL Matters: Is there a need for EAP and communication instructors to constantly highlight to learners the negative impact of code-switching?
Prof Ting: I think if EAP and communication instructors constantly say “please speak English” or “please don’t use other languages”, this may shut the students up, and they do not wish to try communicating in class. It may be good for the instructor to rephrase their utterances in English to show students “this is how it’s said in English”.
References
García, O. (2011). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. John Wiley & Sons.
Mård-Miettinen, K., Palviainen, Å., & Palojärvi, A. (2018). Dynamics in interaction in bilingual team teaching: Examples from a Finnish preschool classroom. In M. Schwartz (Ed.), Preschool Bilingual Education (pp. 163-189). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Mifsud, Charles L., & Vella, L. A. (2018). To mix languages or not? Preschool bilingual education in Malta. In M. Schwartz (Ed.), Preschool Bilingual Education (pp. 57-98). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Prošić-Santovac, D., & Radović, D. (2018). Separating the languages in a bilingual preschool: To do or not to do?. In M. Schwartz (Ed.), Preschool Bilingual Education (pp. 27-56). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Schwartz, M. (Ed.) (2018). Preschool bilingual education: Agency in interactions between children, teachers, and parents. In Preschool Bilingual Education (pp. 1-24). Springer, Cham.