BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN MALI: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TYPES AND FUNCTIONS OF CODESWITCHING USED IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT

Abstract

The bilingual education in Mali refers to the use of the pupils’ mother concomitantly with French in the first grades of schooling. Eleven of the thirteen national languages of Mali have been experienced at school with the aim of improving the Malian educational system because the use of French as the only medium of instruction was considered a contributing factor to the significant number of student dropouts and the high rate of repetition. Depending on the grades, an average have been established for each of the involved languages. This theoretical organization of languages does not prevent from the important use of codeswitching (hereafter CS). the use of CS in the classroom context create debates in many research works. Therefore, one may be curious to know how CS is used in Malian bilingual classes and the functions they may fulfill. The present work is looked at how CS is used in the classroom domain and what pedagogical functions it may fulfill.

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