RUSSIAN-ESTONIAN CODE-SWITCHING IN THE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This study explores the experiences of Russian-speaking students studying at a university with Estonian as the language of instruction. In a bilingual classroom setting, the teacher and her students communicate with each other in intricate and highly routinised sequences of interaction. The teacher is a proficient speaker of Estonian, while the majority of students are not very fluent in that language. During the autumn semester, they were enrolled in an Introduction to Linguistics course, which provides an introductory overview of traditional and contemporary fields of the study of linguistics, points of contact with other disciplines and possibilities for the application of the results of linguistic research. In general, the teacher and her students used both languages outside the university classroom as well as during lectures. It is clear that there is a very real potential for code-switching to occur as the teacher and her students are aware of the linguistic resources available to them despite the constraints.