This article addresses the value of code-switching during bilingual content instruction. The linguistic data were collected during a larger ethnography of communication case study of the language practices of three bilingual Mandarin/English speaking science-content teachers working as they negotiate meaning and instruction for recently arrived non-traditional Chinese immigrant high school students. Through a pedagogic analysis of naturally occurring code-switching practices, the author argues that code-switching is indeed a pedagogic tool used by bilingual teachers in the act of making content comprehensible and as such, it is similar to scaffolding devices regularly used in monolingual education.
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