An Assessment of Code Switching to Students’ English language Proficiency in Tanzania. A Case of Muleba District

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of code-switching to students ‘English language proficiency in secondary school in Muleba District. The study involved three specific objectives; to identify causes of code-switching during teaching and learning in secondary schools, to find out the extent to which code switching affects the promotion of English proficiency among secondary schools learners and lastly to find out the extent to which code switching affects the understanding of subject matter in subjects other than English. The mixed approach was applied where both quantitative and qualitative procedures was used.Descriptive cross sectional design was employed to make an investigation of the phenomena. Data was collected from four secondary schools namely; Bureza secondary school, St Archileus secondary school, Gwanseli secondary school, and Muleba secondary school. The study involved 112 respondents of which fifty six (56) students, four heads of schools (4) and fifty two (52) teachers. Data was collected through questionnaire, interviews and observation. The study used purposive sampling technique and simple randomly techniques. The findings showed that code switching helps in the understanding of subject matter in various subjects taught in English as it helps to clarify concepts, to explain difficult vocabularies, and to clear misunderstanding among learners. Furthermore, most teachers and pupils pointed that code switching affects proficiency in learning English as a language. It is concluded that when teachers use code switching systematically and carefully it helps learners to understand the subject matter in subjects being taught in English. However, English language proficiency suffers and cannot be archived through the use of code switching