The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the use of language alternation and the role it played in four ESP (English for Specific Purposes) classrooms at the College of Business Studies (CBS) in Kuwait, with special reference to the Business English courses taught in that college. Two areas of investigation were examined, the forms of code-switching and the different functions that code-switching achieved in those educational settings.
Qualitative research methodologies were employed to record and interpret the phenomena under study. The main research methodology was the ethnography of interaction which required direct observation and audio-taping of the four ESP classrooms' interaction. The secondary research methodology was participants' interviews which were conducted as two different types of interviews, teachers' interviews and students' interviews. The two research methodologies were used to collect materials at the data-recording phase, to construe information at the interpretation phase and to appraise the recorded materials at the findings phase.
Findings revealed that code-switching was used by the four teachers in those ESP classrooms to accomplish some tasks. It was employed to achieve instructional tasks, to accomplish conversational tasks and to convey social information. Findings also revealed that teachers' instructional strategies and students' survival strategies as phenomenon of the four ESP classrooms at the CBS in Kuwait ware results of the cross knowledge of each party's cultural and educational backgrounds which played an important role in creating those phenomenon. Finally, implications of code-switching for practice and research were provided.