Nowadays codeswitching has become a common phenomenon occurring in periodicals,
advertisements, or reports on TVs and daily newspapers in multimedia, etc. For students of
technology, this phenomenon has popularly applied for their conversations when they discuss
a topic relevant to functions, features or the operation of an electronic device. Codeswitching
refers to the alternate use of two or more than two languages in the same utterance or a
conversation, (Gumper, 1982). The exchange of information with CS terms has become
favourite, because it is a two- way process of thinking directly used in the utterances to
express the contents quickly, and accurately. Moreover, almost all-electronic terms
codeswitched into Vietnamese utterances are English terms. These characteristics have a
remarkable effect on the students’ attitude towards learning English for electronics with
language skills, even in the oral translation skill. Observations from my collected data in
teaching materials and in lessons of English for electronics have shown that CS is explored
by students in various aspects because of three main reasons as follows. Firstly, the tendency
of using CS terms in the daily utterances in multimedia encourages them to insert English
terms into Vietnamese. Secondly, most of the second-year students of electronics at the level
of pre- inter of English want to express their knowledge of English for electronics and
professional knowledge by using directly CS terms in their utterances to explain a definition
or functions of an electronic device. Thirdly, most of them are bilingual students and know
how to practise computing instructions in English everywhere and every time they meet.
Accordingly, inserting CS terms in Vietnamese utterances becomes a habit and does not
make them misunderstand the content of electronic terms in a particular context. From these
reasons, students of electronics apply CS to develop their language learning activities through
language skills i.e. speaking and presentation. This habit of using CS even occurs in the oral
translation tasks because applying directly knowledge of English and of electronics in
Vietnamese versions in a short time requires students to have an in-time reaction in thought
when producing equivalents adequately. Donal (2004) shows that CS in translations takes
place at a syntactic or semantic level with the use of inserting points to represent electronic
concepts familiar to the participant. For many, translation is an art, which is only done by

exceptionally skilled people who are professionals at it. However, in this thesis, my
investigation is only seen translation as the fifth language skillin language learning activities
and practiced by untrained people who are bilingual students of electronics. Thus, CS is
studied to understand why electronic students, who are competent in two languages, alternate
languages in particular translation tasks. Most of the early researches on translations of
English terms for electronics only focus on analyzing forms of equivalents and ways of
conveying semantic meanings into the target language or even looking at them as borrowed
words. These studies do not describe how students apply CS to extent their communicative
competence for achieving conversations goals during translation. This thesis will concentrate
on this phenomenon “CS in the oral translation”. However, it must be stressed that this thesis
neither is an analysis of electronic terms applying CS techniques for professional translators
nor guides for ESP teachers how to teach CS techniques in translation. It is only a reference
for teachers who wish to use translation as a language learning activity for the language
learning practice and improvement.