Algerian Arabic English and French code-switching among first year forgeing languages

Abstract

This present work tends to study Algerian Arabic, French and English code switching among first year foreign languages students at Abdelkarim Fakhar Secondary School, Medea. It aims to find the reasons that push Algerian secondary school students to switch codes during their conversations in the classroom. In order to study this phenomenon, a questionnaire was used as a research instrument which was addressed to thirty foreign languages students aged between 17 and 21 years old who have the tendency to switch codes in their learning. According to the obtained statistics, the main factors that push students to switch codes is their “lack of vocabulary”. Moreover, they switch codes whenever they feel the need to, whether to make themselves understood or to learn as much languages as they can. For instance, it was clearly concluded that code switching can have both positive and negative effect on the learning process; it can be used as helpful way to learn languages through translation as it can be a way to show language weaknesses and the inability of mastering at least one language.