Bilingual Shadowing and Code Switching between First Language and Second Language: A Case Study on Arabic and English Bilinguals

Abstract

This paper aims at studying phenomena related to bilingualism which are also implicated in education such as code switching and shadowing. Shadowing techniques have an impact on the learners’ listening skills and code switching is a useful strategy for language transfer and meaning explanation. The experimental research was conducted on collecting data from the experiment and control groups, which consist of university students in each group. The data were gathered by means of online one-on-one meetings with the students ; (1) to conduct simon test with wordlists in first language, Arabic, and second language, English, (2) and to present both experiment and control groups with correct and flawed texts in L1 and L2. The code switching findings reveal that it is faster to switch from the mother tongue/first language (L1) to the second language (L2) than vice-versa. The shadowing findings show that bilinguals present higher grammatical and lexical sensitivity in L1 than in L2.This article suggests that teachers should employ shadowing for listening and encourage learners to use their L1 in second language L2 learning.