Institutional Repository | Satya Wacana Christian University: The Communicative Purpose of Code Switching Used by English Teachers' Communication in the Classroom

THE COMMUNICATIVE PURPOSE OF CODE SWITCHING USED
BY ENGLISH TEACHERS’ COMMUNICATION IN THE
CLASSROOM
Aji Utomo

Abstract
This study is conducted on the writer’s interest toward communicative purpose of code
switching in classroom used by teachers in teaching and learning process which use English as a
target language being learnt. In this study, teachers use Indonesian as the first language and
English as the target language alternately to help students in understanding teachers’ utterances.
The purpose of this study is to find the communicative purpose of code switching used by
English Teachers’ classroom communication in SMP Negeri 1 Banyubiru. To come to the
desired result, the writer observed three English teachers in SMP Negeri 1 Banyubiru to get the
code switching dialogue or utterances transcription used by English teacher in classroom
communication. Based on Gumperz (1982) theory that a speaker plays upon the connotation of the
“we-code” to create a conversational effect, the writer analyzed the teachers’ utterances using
theories in literature review on communicative purpose. The result shows that teachers code
switched to justify/clarify the students’ understanding, to check for students’ understanding, for
Efficiency in explaining the materials, no equivalent words, affective function, for managing
class, and for communicating meaning.
Key words: Code switching, Communicative purpose.