Five Importance Of Code Switching

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Believe or not, code-switching is very important especially for an international student like me. Matt Thompson, the author of Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch, said “we want to fit in … to act or talk more like those around us.”. Studying in America, language of classes is ongoing in English-based which I am used to it since my school back in my home country are the same. But the biggest difference or struggle for me is that I must ask questions in English. My major is Computer Science. In the learning of CS, there are many technical terms which are hard for non-CS people to understand. It is getting harder in code-switching since those words are made in English, another language like Chinese because people cannot understand by only looking at the word.
This is my second years in Seattle, before coming to here, I was living in Hong Kong from I born. It is funny but the first time I ride …show more content…

I think it is good for me because I can look at the same thing in different point of view, to train my critical thinking skill. For example, the word “booth”, in English meaning we will think of a table or an area. But in Chinese, we will think of a place to get rest or a big group of people. Also, every language has something similar or very unique, it is hard to explain in another language. Like “Hea” in Cantonese, we used to describe someone not pays effort which hard to find a word in English to substitute it. But code-switching sometime working not quite well when the time you cannot fully express your idea in a specific language. English as an example, I think I can only tell 70% of my whole thought. Vocabulary and slang also make the language sounds “native” or not. Even the people coming from the same country sometimes have difficulty on talk to each other as I am facing every

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