Neologism awareness, classroom code-switching, and speaking proficiency among grade 11 students

This study aimed to find out the neologism awareness, classroom code-switching and speaking proficiency among eighty (80) Grade 11 students at the Visayas State University (VSU). The first forty (40) respondents answered a survey on neologism awareness. The remaining forty (40) respondents answered a survey questionnaire on classroom code-switching adopted from Olugbara (2008) and a speaking proficiency test from the International English Language Testing System (IELTS, 2017). The study followed a descriptive survey design. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The Spearman's Rho method was used for correlation analysis. Results showed that majority of the respondents are in the average ("Fair" and "Good") level of awareness based on newly coined words and expressions or new meanings for an established word. Results further showed that most of them are also aware of some factors related to neologism like coined words with reference to famous personalities, popular events classic periods or the like. However, majority of them have "Poor" level of awareness in neologisms when it comes to enumerating neologisms that the respondents know at the moment when the research was conducted. Meanwhile, the remaining forty (40) respondents indicated that they agree on the usage of code-switching inside the classroom as they answered "Agree" on 23 out of 27 item indicators in classroom code-switching. For the result of their speaking proficiency test, 40% of the respondents scored at the level of "Very good", 25% "Good user", 17.5% "Competent user", 10% "Limited user", 25% "Good user", 5% "Modest user", and 2.5% "Extremely limited user". However, given that only 7 (17.5%) out of 40 respondents fell under "Competent user" in the speaking proficiency test result, overall findings indicated the need for this group to improve their speaking proficiency. This study suggests that students be more aware with neologisms since basically, language is dynamic and that some meanings of certain words have meaning extensions or some may have changed depending upon the time, environment, speakers, and the like. Moreover, they are to be particular with the usage of classroom code-switching to facilitate their language learning, but not to the extent that it would deteriorate their English language proficiency.