In multilingual communities, code-switching is a widespread phenomenon that happens from daily life and workplaces to classrooms in which specific languages have been instituted as the official languages of instruction. Malaysia is one of the nations that have multilingual communities that consists of three main races; Malay, Chinese and Indians. From 1957 to 1967, language was used as an important tool in order to achieve unity and Bahasa Malaysia becomes the national language. Previously, English was compulsory in all schools especially the vernacular schools and due to the lack of English educators at that time, the idea was off the hook. In 1967, English language status was removed but it was still used nationwide.

1.1 Background of Problem

In 1956, the Education Review Committee aimed to establish multicultural education systems that support other languages since Malaysia have multilingual communities and English becomes part of it. Today, English had becomes an international language and unofficially second language in Malaysia since most people used it. English as a second language status in Malaysia has been complemented through wide use of English in the social setting as well as the education setting. Teaching of English has been greatly emphasised by the government through its ministry. Due to this matter, the declining level of English proficiency among students has brought about the need to find out how to tackle the issue. Teachers, consequently, have been employing code switching as a means of providing students with the opportunities to communicate and enhancing students’ understanding. Furthermore, code switching helps to facilitate the flow of classroom instruction since the teachers do not have to spend so much time trying to explain to the learners or searching for the simplest words to clarify any confusion that might arise. Code-switching should not be considered as a sign of shortcoming in the teacher. Instead, it is a careful strategy employed by the teachers. Code-switching should be allowed whenever necessary with some learners in specific situations.

Richard (1985) suggests that code-switching is a term in linguistics referring to replacement between two or more languages in a single conversation, stretch of discourse, or utterances between people who have more than one language in common. Speakers of more than one language are known for their ability to code switch or mix their language during communication. This phenomenon occurs when the speaker substitutes a word or phrase from one language to a phrase or word from another language. Ayeomoni (2006) claims that many educators have attempted to define the term “code switching” and each understand the concepts from different points of view. Gumperz (1982) defined code-switching as the use of more than one code or language in the course of a single speech event, taken to refer to teacher utterances in the classroom. In other words, the teachers’ use code-switching in order to convey meanings to the students. Besides that, Numan and Carter (2001) stated that code switching as “a phenomenon of switching from one language to another in the same discourse” (p. 275).

Appel Musyken (1987) mentioned that code switching can be divided into two categories which are intrasentential and intersentential. Intrasentential is a switch that occurs in the middle of a sentence. It was also known as ‘code mixing’. For example, my girlfriend ‘suka’ ice cream. The word “Suka” means “like” in the Malay language. The real sentence is “My girlfriend likes ice cream”. A word from the Malay language is replaced by an English word in a sentence. The later is a switch of language that happens between sentences. A suitable example is “I got an A for my drawing, awak macam mana, Farid?”. “Awak macam mana” means “what about you”. The exact sentence should be “I got an A for my drawing, what about you, Farid?”. The first sentence uses English and the later is in Bahasa Malaysia.

There is one more type of code switching which is extrasentential as introduces by Hamers and Blanc (1989), extrasentential switches include tags and fillers. An excellent example of a local extrasentential code switching that close to our culture is ‘Later lah’. “Lah” is a particle widely used by Malaysians and Singaporean in their speech. Holmes (2008) stated that the particle “Lah” is used to show intimacy or solidarity in a relationship.

So, the term code switching in this study is the use of two languages within a sentence or between sentences. Intrasentential refers to the switch that occurs within a sentence while intersentential points to switches between sentences. Last but not least, extrasentential refers to the tags and fillers that do not exist in the word list of the language used.

Statement of Research Problem

Malaysian learners’ needs to become proficient English users in order to access knowledge and information available in English as well as to be able to communicate successfully, thus suggesting the important position the students may hold in the future. But before they can get to the targeted proficiency level, definitely they must get used to the English language itself.

Since English acts as a second language in Malaysia, the lack of exposure is the pivotal factor that will hinders the students to become proficient in English. Thus, classroom instructions are the most valuable experience for learners because of the limited exposures to sufficient comprehensible input from the natural environment they might get. Therefore, in order to raise they proficiency level, they must gain sufficient comprehensible input. It means the students have to gain understanding towards what they learnt before thinking about raising the proficiency level. This is where a strategy to help them learn English as a second language must be applied by teachers. Code switching is a form of strategy that will solve these problems. It helps to facilitate the flow of classroom instruction since the teachers do not have to spend so much time trying to explain to the learners or searching for the simplest words to clarify any confusion that might arise. Teachers code switch when the level of English used in the textbook or to be taught is beyond the learner’s ability or when the teachers have exhausted the means to adjust his speech to the learner’s level.

Research Objective

The purpose of this study is to investigate code switching in the teaching of English as a second language to secondary school students. There are several factors which are vital in determining the effectiveness of this study.

Objectives of the study: