摘要：This study was undertaken in a public university in Malaysia which prescribes English asthe medium of instruction for all courses taught. However, it has been observed that thispolicy has not been fully adhered to. Code-switching (CS) and code-mixing (CM) ofEnglish and Bahasa Malaysia occur extensively in the instructors’ speech in theclassroom. This paper attempts to highlight the frequency of this communicativebehaviour, and both the instructors’ and students’ attitudes towards it. Usingself-completed questionnaires and interviews as methods of data collection, the findingsreveal that instructors frequently code-switched and code-mixed between the twolanguages in the classroom. The analysis shows that the occurrence of these phenomenawas related to the instructors’, as well as the students’ own linguistic competence, and thepurpose of facilitating effective teaching and learning. There is, however, mixed attitudestowards CS/CM. While both instructors and students agreed that CS/CM can promotebetter understanding, the latter, however, students with better English proficiency felt thatsuch communicative behaviour can be off-putting as it does not help in improving theirlinguistic competence in English. The paper, thus, raises some legitimate concerns of theconflict between the policy and its actual implementation, which certainly has someimplications on language development, teacher education and policy assessment.
