Taglish is ok naman, 'di ba? : nature and effect of code switching as a communicative medium of discussion inside Natural Science 1 classrooms in the University of the Philippines, Los Baños

Date

4-2010

Degree

Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts

College

College of Agriculture and Food Science (CAFS)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Jonalou SJ. Labor

Committee Member

Janette H. Malata

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Abstract

The change in a language is parallel to the changing culture of a society. With the onset of globalization and other phenomena, people from different nations interact with each other, and became exposed to two or more languages. In the process, the bilinguals learned to utilize two languages in a conversation. This is called code switching. Taglish is code switching between the Tagalog and English languages and is used by Filipinos in everyday conversations – including in the academe particularly in classroom settings. This study aimed to determine the effect of Taglish in the students’ classroom participation as well as learning. It is important to determine how language affects the performance of students to help the members of the academic community to produce a strategy for a more efficient and effective way of conveying information and scientific concepts to the students. This research observed two NASC 1 (A Material Universe) small-sized classes, labeled Class A and Class B, with forty two (42) and forty four (44) students respectively. Two sets of data were obtained and used as sources of determining the effect of Taglish in the classroom performance of students: recorded classroom lecture- discussions and written examinations in both Taglish and English languages. A questionnaire/survey was also conducted to verify the results from the two previous sources of data. The speech act theory and communicative efficiency categories were used to analyze the utterances and determine the efficiency of the languages used. After the study, four (4) major conclusions were drawn: 1. The study determined that the students expressed more their ideas and actions in Taglish rather than in English. 2. It was also found out that the students were using Taglish in order to cope with their deficiency in both English and Tagalog languages. 3. It was proven that the medium of communication has no significant effect on Class A. However, the median percentage of students in Class B is higher in Taglish as compared to English. 4. The self-rated proficiency of students on both English and Taglish languages were high. This contrasted the result of the utterance analysis and the written examination analysis. The self-rated proficiency of students somehow is not a reliable or accurate gauge of the students’ proficiency in both languages. This research recommends that Taglish as a medium of communication should be tolerated inside classrooms because of its comfort and efficiency. The students however, should be encouraged to use Taglish in intersentential form of code switching in order to practice and hone their skills in using English and Tagalog so as not to compromise their proficiency in both languages.

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