Functions of the Teacher's Codeswitching at the College of Dentistry of the University of Anbar

This is a qualitative research that sheds light on the practice of codeswitching by the teacher at the College of Dentistry of the University of Anbar. The goal of this research is to find out the functions of the teacher's codeswitching practised inside bilingual classes in which English is used as the language of instruction according to the language policy. Lessons of approximately one-hour length were audio-recorded in three grades. Three teachers of the first, the third and the fifth grades were examined under this research. This helps give wider insight into the use of codeswitching in different levels of teaching. The researchers adopt Gumperz's (1982) conversational and metaphorical model which focuses on functional use of language in interactions. It is found that all functions presented by Gumperz are prevalent in different rates in the current study. Three functions of codeswitching are found to be dominant in the current study. These functions are reiteration, message qualification and personalization versus objectivization. The other three uses of codeswitching for quotations, interjections and addressee specification are not frequent. In general, the functional use of codeswitching is found to be an effective teaching strategy.