Projecting classroom language use in a group of bilingual graduates of a BATESL course

Forty‐eight graduating native Cantonese‐speaking students on a BA Honours course in Teaching English as a Second Language responded to a questionnaire about their ability in English, their use of English — including code‐switching and code‐mixing — in their daily life and their practice teaching on the course, and their view of the appropriateness of dual‐language use in the English classroom for different purposes. Responses indicate that the students are moderately confident in their English ability, with writing ability rated higher on average than speaking ability. In their language use with Cantonese‐speaking friends, the students report that they often employ mixed‐code Cantonese‐English but rarely code‐switch. Responses further indicate that this group of future English teachers, while supporting the use of English in the classroom, also believe that the mother tongue is appropriately used in the English class for both compensatory and strategic purposes.