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Abstract
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Apparently code-switching, which is described by Richards and Schmidt (2002) as “a change by a speaker (or writer) from one language or language variety to another one”(p. 81), has always been a matter of controversial issue about whether the use of (L1) in EFL classrooms should be avoided or welcomed. Historically the use of students’ first language (L1) has been looked upon negatively or even somewhat frowned upon due to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or even the Audio-Lingual Method (Stern, 1991). Although codeswitching has broadly been scrutinized from different researchers’ perspectives, only few analysts have surveyed the prominent part which is studying about teachers attitudes towards classroom code-switching and factors which might influence their actual practices regarding their tolerance level towards learners’ codeswitching. Hence,besides the importance of the explorations on teachers attitudes and their codeswitching behavior in EFL context ,it seems considering the importance of evaluation of socio-environmental factors, such as teachers' gender, age group, academic degree, academic major, teaching experience,qualification which might influence their treatment and tolerance toward codeswitching also plays significant role in exploring whether there are consistent patterns in how teachers perceive and react to classroom code-switching. The current research is a dominantly quantitative questionnaire-based survey study to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceived attitudes concerning student-initiated code-switching in language classes. For the aim of this study a sample of about 200 novice and experienced male and female EFL teachers teaching English in the private language institutes of Tabriz, Iran will be selected based on convenience sampling rule.
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