ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a quantitative analysis of the ten subcategories of the semantic pedagogical functions (SPFs) of the Shona code-switches found in the teacher-talk used for this study. The two-pronged purpose of the statistical analyses is to both help deepen insights into the characteristics of the SPFs and to provoke fledgling researchers think about possibilities for engaging more quantitative analyses of their larger scale research data on similar topics. Suggested possibilities for exploring pedagogical code-switching are shared with the limitations in mind. The descriptive statistics reveal frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, and the measures of variability of the ten SPF subcategories across the six lessons. “Questioning and Checking Lesson Progress” had the highest average percentage occurrence of 23%. The occurrence of “Recapping Subject Content” had a minimum variability of 0.9, which suggests that “Recapping Subject Content” had consistent (evenly distributed) occurrence among the semantic function categories. For more robustness, the chi-square goodness of fit (GOF) test and Pearson correlation coefficients were conducted. The analyses consistently revealed that SPFs F and G (Questioning and Checking Lesson Progress and Giving Instructions and Written Work, respectively) occurred most frequently across the dataset.
