Code Switching and Academic Performance Among Students

Wenie  L. Nahial,; Fritzie  L. Cempron,

Code Switching and Academic Performance Among Students

Abstract:

This study aimed to determine the extent of code-switching utiliza-tion among the respondents in teaching English, Science, and Mathe-matics, as well as its association with the academic performance of the students. Thirty-nine (39) senior high school teachers agreed to serve as respondents of the study after meeting the requirements. Re-search protocols of DepEd-Camiguin were religiously observed in gathering the required data. Appropriate statistical tools were used to produce reliable results and sound insights. The descriptive statis-tics showed that females dominated in the teaching profile with a bal-anced distribution across age groups and experience levels. Analysis further revealed that the respondents had maintained a consistent, very high utilization of code-switching as a deliberate and strategic instructional tool. The students' academic performance was noted as being distributed between “Very Satisfactory” and “Outstanding” lev-els. The study found no significant relationship between code-switch-ing and academic outcomes. This indicates that, as code-switching helped students to learn, this pedagogical approach does serve as a good predictor of the academic performance of the students. The study also found that respondents’ utilization of code-switching did vary significantly when grouped by sex, age, educational attainment, or years of teaching experience. It can be concluded then that the uti-lization of code-switching has become a routine among the respond-ents in the delivery of the lessons to the students. Banking on the find-ings, future researchers are encouraged to consider the mediation ef-fect of code-switching in breaking the learning barriers and gaps to-wards comprehending the concepts and ideas in the core learning ar-eas in the Philippine basic education.