مشخصات پژوهش

“Code-Switching”, an important issue in the field of both language classroom and sociolinguistics, has been under consideration in investigations related to bilingual and multilingual societies. First proposed by Haugen (1956) and later developed by Grosjean (1982), the term code-switching refers to language alternation during communication. Although code-switching is unavoidable in bilingual and multilingual contexts, its role and motivational determinants in language classes are sometimes ignored. The goal of the present article was to investigate the motivational determinants of classroom code-switching in EFL classrooms. The research was conducted with 400 participants, including 374 students and 26 teachers. The data collection techniques included questionnaires and observation checklist, all of which were designed based on Hymes’ (1962) framework and Poplack’s (1980), Myers-Scotton’s (1989), Blom and Gumperz’s (1972), and Gumperz’s (1982) categorizations. The data were analyzed through the software SPSS (Version 20). The results revealed that providing the listener with better understanding, clarification, and checking comprehension are the most important motivational determinants for code switching.