Code-mixing and its impact on language competence

Along with China’s economic growth, code-mixing is becoming a common phenomenon, especially in big cities. Meanwhile, it is a topic of research in China’s language education as there are different views on the influence of code-mixing in terms of the development of L2 competence or maintenance of L1. One of the views is that code-mixing is a sign of an inability to express oneself, and it reduces the opportunity of using L2 completely. For this reason, code-mixing is regarded as a factor leading to the decline of language proficiency. To discover the impact of code-mixing on its users’ language competence, the current paper reports an empirical study that investigates code-mixing in three coastal cities of China. 230 Chinese-English bilinguals participated in the study, and the study employed questionnaires and tests to collect data. The data were quantitatively classified and statistically analyzed and described. Findings revealed that most users did not feel code-mixing to be detrimental; the test results are in line with the participants' feelings. The conclusion of the paper can prompt people concerned to re-examine the role of code-mixing on L2 development and L1 maintanence from a wider perspective.