Saudi EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions Towards Using English-Arabic Code Switching as a Teaching and Learning Strategy

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ and students' perceptions towards using CS (code-switching) in teaching and learning English at Saudi secondary schools. It also attempted to identify EFL teachers and students' reasons for using CS in teaching and learning English in Saudi high schools. The sample of the study consisted of 100 teachers and 122 students who were randomly selected from secondary schools in the city of Riyadh. The data of the study were collected via a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. Moreover, this instrument was validated by ten university EFL professors, and its reliability was achieved by calculating Cronbach Alpha formula. The findings of the study revealed that teachers and students believed that CS was an effective strategy in helping students to understand unfamiliar topics, facilitating students’ learning of new grammatical structures, increasing student-teacher interaction, and enlivening the atmosphere of the class. Finally, teachers and students agreed that the most important reasons behind using CS were increasing comprehension, avoiding misunderstanding, eliciting better responses from students, and filling gaps in a classroom conversation.