This Is The End
1.
there’s no more ink
to print the truth
straight lines erased
2.
the great downfall
deeper and crushing
when hitting bottom
3.
fire burning
blood letters flowing
thick drips
4.
this is the end
unless we stop
fingertips of sin
Print Maker
I’m not sure
you should print this,
it’s up to you
when the last period
drops.
Seeds
And somehow
the rain comes,
filling up the wells,
the overflow
saving
all when realizing
the flower Master.
Language Alternation in Higher Education: Examining the Effects of Code-Switching on English Proficiency Among Uzbek Bilingual Learners
Abstract
This study explores how code-switching between Uzbek and English influences English language development among bilingual university students in Uzbekistan. With the growing role of English in academic environments, bilingual learners frequently alternate between the two languages to navigate classroom communication and learning tasks. Employing a mixed-method approach—combining surveys, proficiency assessments, and qualitative interviews—this research reveals a complex relationship between code-switching and language proficiency. While code-switching appears to support comprehension and social engagement in the classroom, excessive reliance on the first language may inhibit advanced development in speaking and writing. The study suggests a need for balanced bilingual education strategies that recognize the pedagogical value of code-switching while fostering sustained use of the target language.
1. Introduction
As the world becomes more interconnected, the prevalence of bilingual and multilingual individuals continues to rise, particularly in academic contexts where students are often required to study in a language other than their mother tongue. In Uzbekistan, English is increasingly prioritized in higher education, creating a linguistic environment where many students regularly shift between their native language, Uzbek, and English. This phenomenon, commonly referred to as code-switching, has become a characteristic feature of student discourse both inside and outside the classroom.
Code-switching refers to the practice of alternating between two or more languages during a single interaction or conversation. Linguists have long debated whether this practice facilitates or obstructs the acquisition of a second language. On one hand, it can function as a cognitive support mechanism, allowing students to express ideas more fully, clarify confusion, and participate actively in discussion. On the other hand, if overused, it may reduce meaningful exposure to the target language, limit vocabulary acquisition, and undermine learners’ confidence in using English independently. Despite the growing body of research on bilingual education, relatively little is known about how habitual code-switching affects English language development among Uzbek learners in academic settings. Given the shift toward English-medium instruction in universities, understanding how language alternation influences students’ proficiency is both timely and necessary.
Research Objectives
This study seeks to:
1. Investigate the frequency and contexts in which code-switching occurs among bilingual university students.
2. Analyze the relationship between the frequency of code-switching and levels of English language proficiency.
3. Explore students’ personal attitudes and experiences regarding code-switching as part of their language learning process.
Relevance
This research is significant for educators, curriculum developers, and language policymakers in bilingual or multilingual contexts. It provides insights into how bilingual learners navigate their linguistic environments and offers recommendations on how to effectively integrate code-switching into English language instruction.
2. Methodology
The participants in this study consisted of 60 second-year students majoring in English Philology at a prominent university in Tashkent. All students identified as bilingual in Uzbek and English, and they had studied English for a minimum of five years prior to university.
A mixed-methods approach was adopted to allow for both quantitative analysis and in-depth qualitative exploration. The following instruments were used:
Questionnaire: A structured survey containing 20 items focused on code-switching habits, contexts of use (academic vs. informal), and perceived impact on learning.
English Language Proficiency Test: Based on CEFR benchmarks, this test measured reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills objectively.
Semi-structured Interviews: Conducted with 10 participants to gather qualitative data on personal experiences with code-switching, including challenges and benefits.
The questionnaire and language test were administered during class hours, with the support of instructors. Interviews were conducted in a quiet setting, recorded (with permission), and transcribed for thematic analysis. The data collection process spanned a total of four weeks. Quantitative data from the questionnaires and tests were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. Qualitative data from interviews were examined using thematic coding to identify recurring patterns and sentiments regarding the use of code-switching in educational settings.
3. Results
The survey results demonstrated that:
A large majority (approximately 85%) of students code-switched daily during classes, particularly in group discussions and peer interactions.
Students were more likely to revert to Uzbek when confronted with unfamiliar vocabulary or when discussing culturally complex or emotionally charged topics.
Around 60% of respondents indicated that they often began responses in English but reverted to Uzbek for clarity or ease.
Proficiency Outcomes
When English test scores were compared, the following differences emerged: Frequent code-switchers showed higher comprehension scores (listening and reading), suggesting that code-switching may aid in understanding input. However, the same group demonstrated lower performance in speaking and writing, implying a lack of consistent practice in producing English output without reverting to Uzbek.
Qualitative analysis revealed three major themes:
1. Cognitive Support: Students often used code-switching to overcome vocabulary gaps or to clarify their thoughts before expressing them in English.
2. Psychological Comfort: Switching to Uzbek helped reduce anxiety in oral communication, especially during presentations or debates.
3. Awareness of Dependency: Some students expressed concern that code-switching had become a habit that hindered their ability to think and respond entirely in English, especially in academic writing.
4. Discussion
The findings from this study reinforce the idea that code-switching is both a resource and a risk in bilingual language development. It serves as a scaffolding tool that enables learners to remain engaged in the learning process when they lack full command of the target language. For many students, it fosters participation, lowers affective filters (e.g., fear or embarrassment), and promotes comprehension of complex academic material.
However, frequent switching may also become a crutch, reducing the necessity for learners to push themselves into productive language use. When students default to their native language too often, they may miss opportunities to internalize grammatical structures, expand their lexicon, and develop fluency in academic discourse.
Implications for Language Instruction
Language instructors should neither discourage code-switching entirely nor allow it to dominate classroom interactions. Instead, they should:
Use code-switching strategically—for example, to explain grammar rules, give instructions, or translate unfamiliar vocabulary.
Create target-language immersion zones to encourage output without interference.
Provide feedback that helps learners become more metalinguistically aware of when and why they code-switch. This study was limited to a single university context and relied on self-reported data. Future research could employ longitudinal methods to track changes in proficiency over time and examine how different instructional approaches affect code-switching behavior. It may also be useful to study multilingual students who speak Russian, Uzbek, and English, to compare code-switching across more than two languages.
5. Conclusion
In sum, code-switching is a nuanced and context-sensitive practice that reflects both the challenges and strengths of bilingual learners. Among Uzbek university students, it is an effective mechanism for managing comprehension and classroom interaction. However, it must be monitored to ensure it does not interfere with the acquisition of productive language skills. By understanding the dual nature of code-switching, educators can better support learners in becoming proficient, confident users of English in both academic and professional contexts.
REFERENCES:
7. Auer, P. (1998). Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. Routledge.
8. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Multilingual Matters.
9. Canagarajah, S. (1995). Functions of code switching in ESL classrooms: Socializing bilingualism in Jaffna. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16(3), 173–195.
10. Levine, G. S. (2011). Code Choice in the Language Classroom. Multilingual Matters.
a brilliantly angry tattooed daughter of the sun
disembarking the city bus
sharing certain sorrowful lexemes
neighbors at war
the years he carried around
the First Book of Seconds
now you can Google the face
you had before you were born
a faint star in the smoky vault of night
all I could carry
butterfly on the sun-washed screen
nobody’s getting up to look
he admitted to worrying about how butterflies
were getting along in the thunderstorm
easy, it’s merely an orientational flight
of the long-tongued bee
he begins with wanting to incarnate to the Apache horse-paths of heaven
and ends up ordering a corned beef on rye with coleslaw and Russian dressing
an hour early with a notebook and pen
pleased as he is timing the water beetle’s change of direction
get the Tai Chi and beaded garden web out of that poem
and tell how you broke your mother’s heart
arching his back to gaze
at a picture of the Himalayas
he’s working in charcoal now
starting with his hand on the garage wall
crushing the earth in my chair
a sparrow dropped-down into clover
Bio: Patrick Sweeney is a short form poet and a devotee of the public library.
Why are these poems called ‘Echoes?” Are you referencing echoes of themes throughout history, or the myth of Echo and Narcissus, or something else?
“The title ‘Echoes’ operates on multiple resonances. In Mandarin, we have a proverb from the Buddhist poet-monk Li Shutong (李叔同) of the late Qing dynasty: ‘A thought that’s constantly in mind comes with an echo in its might.’ This captures how persistent thoughts reverberate through time and consciousness.
For me, poetry exists as a trifecta—history’s weight, mythic truth, and individual experience. These three elements form an indivisible triangle; remove one, and the structure collapses. When this hybrid translates through memory into verse, it becomes an echo—not unlike the relationship between sound and its aftersound, between experience and its poetic afterlife.
The myth of Echo and Narcissus haunts these poems too, particularly in how exile creates a doubling: we speak, but hear our words return transformed by distance. Every poem here is both utterance and return, original cry and its distortion through time.
We make the echo first, in our bodies and memories, before we ever write it down. The page merely catches what’s already reverberating.”
How and why have Lermontov and Akhmatova become your inspirations? What do you see in their works that you admire, and how have you brought that into your own pieces?
I knew this question would come, and even arranging these words brings me to tears—because Lermontov and Akhmatova represent the two chambers of my heart, the systole and diastole of my poetic existence.
Akhmatova embodies the terrible arithmetic of staying. Her choice to remain in Soviet Russia while others fled mirrors my own negotiations with homeland and exile. In ‘Requiem,’ she transforms personal grief—lamenting her imprisoned son—into an indictment of state terror. What strikes me most is her austere precision: barely a league of emotion, yet each line cuts like winter glass. Her contemporaries in the Silver Age either genuflected to power or dissolved into their own despair. She alone maintained that devastating clarity. The Swedish Academy recoiled from giving her the Nobel precisely because her truth was too graphic, too unadorned.
Her sacrifice illuminates my own: the mother tongue I’ve had to half-forfeit (in China, to write freely means surveillance; in the West, to be heard means English); the treasures left behind; the solitude required to build an inner world strong enough for creation. This ‘elegant restraint’ you detect in my work is learned stoicism—a necessary armor. Yet beneath it pulses radical empathy for all exiles, geographic or internal. Though we’ve never met, I hear their scream: ‘I want to live!’
If Akhmatova is my yin—witnessing, enduring, distilling—then Lermontov is pure yang: the romantic who transmutes oppression into fury. Where she documents, he detonates. His ‘The Poet’s dead’ and ‘The Cloud’ demonstrate how anger can become incandescent art. Those unsettling, haunting images in my work? They’re Lermontov’s ghost teaching me that sometimes the only response to injustice is to set the page on fire, even at the cost of forfeiting one’s own homeland to uphold one’s self amidst divisive currents.
Together, they’ve taught me that poetry can be both scalpel and flame, both witness and warrior. In my work, Akhmatova’s ice meets Lermontov’s fire, creating steam—that vapor between staying and leaving, between silence and scream, where my own poems breathe.”
Interesting that you identify Western and traditional Chinese poetic styles and take elements of each into your poems. What has it been like to craft poetry as a bilingual person? Do you compose in English or Mandarin, do you think in both languages as you write? Do you find that languages themselves, and their rhythms, shape the content or structure of your poems?
The chasm between Chinese and English poetic traditions has shaped me profoundly. Chinese poetry luxuriates in indirection—every plum blossom speaks volumes, each bamboo bend carries philosophy. The poet becomes a humble conduit between nature and reader, never presuming to explain what moonlight on water means. We trust the image to carry its own enlightenment. A closing line merely ‘dots the dragon’s eyes’—essential, yes, but the dragon was already alive in the preceding verses.
English poetry, particularly contemporary Western verse, demands the opposite: clarity as virtue, economy as craft. The poet must architect meaning, not merely channel it. During my first three years writing in English, feedback was consistent: ‘Powerful images, moving emotions, but requires multiple readings.’ Even my lightest lines carried what readers called ‘fatalistic gravity’—that ancient Chinese sense that every gesture contains the universe’s weight.
I spent years trying to reconcile these approaches: the Western praise for accessibility versus the Chinese understanding that ‘nature and human are one’ (天人合一). Only through accumulated life experience—exile, loss, resistance—did I find my synthesis. Now I can achieve ‘readability’ without sacrificing depth, can make a vestment ‘smile’ without explaining why, can connect continents through a seagull’s flight rather than abrupt temporal markers.
I compose primarily in English now, partly due to my Western-focused studies, but mostly because writing in my non-native language offers productive estrangement. It forces me to reinvent rather than inherit, to forge new synaptic connections between sound and meaning. When I write, what emerges isn’t English or Mandarin but something pre-linguistic—an unmodified rumble from my core that chooses its own linguistic vessel. In those moments, we touch the pure pulse of living through sound alone.
Language itself has never been my architect—at most, a carpenter smoothing edges or filling gaps. Emotion, urgency, and message determine form. A protest poem might emerge as experimental fragments (like Echo IV’s compact brutality) or as prose poetry (Echo III’s voice flowing like water from one throat to thousands). The content births its own container, not the reverse. This is perhaps my deepest inheritance from both traditions: the Chinese faith that form follows spirit, married to the English insistence that spirit must find communicable form.”
I notice a theme of human suffering at the hands of others: a violent husband and refugees who flee violence and find themselves still marginalized in their new lands. What draws you to those themes?
It’s a delicate and profound question. I’m drawn to these themes because I’m deeply intrigued by how systems can deform individuals, transforming ordinary or even decent human beings into figures capable of profound cruelty. Often, an individual’s personal agency is eroded or contested when societal structures thrive upon their trauma or tacitly condone violence. To explore this phenomenon further, one must investigate educational, cultural, and economic factors that silently breed violence and perpetuate suffering.
Crime and tragedy serve as the quietest yet deepest reflections of a society’s wounds—visible only to those who dare look closely. Similarly, the experiences of refugees reveal another dimension of these wounds. Throughout seven years living in the UK, I’ve formed friendships with individuals from diverse global backgrounds. Their narratives of familial histories in London, wars in their homelands, and the existential struggles of reconciling dreams with harsh realities have profoundly impacted me. I’ve realized that we all inhabit a liminal space between war and peace, where understanding and empathy are always possible if we actively listen, both to ourselves and to the voices around us.
Ultimately, my poetry aspires to provide solace, however fleeting, to those who feel exiled or alienated, offering a momentary sense of belonging or home within the shared recognition of our collective struggle.
You mention in your author’s note that “nature is also a teacher.” How do the natural motifs and the natural world function in your poems?
Nature serves as both messenger and medium. Whenever I encounter emotions too visceral for straightforward speech, I invite the natural world to translate. Trees, flowers, and coastlines vibrate on the same frequency as those gut‑level feelings, bridging the space between stanzas—and between reader and poet.
Nature also acts as a critical mirror: it reveals that the so-called “survival codes” running through our societies did not blossom from some higher ethical soil but from the stark physics of scarcity and fear. By foregrounding that origin, I aim to question whether these codes are immutable or merely inherited habits we’ve yet to dismantle. When I return to the image of a red beacon strobing across a storm-dark shoreline, I’m less interested in its drama than in its dual function—how a safeguard doubles as a boundary, how protection can slip into quiet temptation to what’s beyond. In that uneasy glow, I probe the complicity between safety and sanguine, asking what the comfort of eternity cost and how the sense aliveness ultimately pays toll of solitude without regret.
Do you think your writing has changed over time? How would you describe your style, and how you’ve developed it?
Absolutely. Writing evolves like any living organism. My first English poems were dense with elusive imagery, and my abandoned early novel—steeped in Woolfian stream-of-consciousness—never balanced character and plot in a way that felt authentic to me at nineteen.
Since then, I’ve forged a dialogue between poetry and prose. Poetry lends my novels an unshakable moral backbone, distilling complex ideas into crystalline sentences that anchor entire volumes. Novel-writing, in turn, lets me dissect psychology in slow motion, testing poetic abstractions inside fully realized narrative worlds. The result is a style that marries lyrical precision with narrative clarity, allowing abstraction and realism to coexist on the page.
What are you writing now, and where do you hope writing will take you in the future?
I’m currently developing a work of literary fiction that grows directly out of the remnants of my earlier, shelved Woolf‑inspired experiment. Rooted in Eastern European culture, literature, and the region’s stark natural landscapes, the novel filters wider Eurasian geopolitics through the intimate lens of a single life. At the center lies a decent man whose unhealed trauma becomes the very fuel a rigid system uses to reshape him, asking: When the machinery of power profits from pain, how much freedom of choice truly remains?
Alongside his story runs that of a woman determined to carve and protect a private sanctuary—“a room of her own”—in a world where every pane of glass has been forged by the system that would surveil her. Their intertwined narratives let me probe two core questions: What inner resources does it take for a person to resist the constant pull of manipulation, and what must be sacrificed to guard even a sliver of autonomy?
I hope this project—and whatever follows—will lead me toward sharper, more honest inquiries rather than easy conclusions, using language to expose the complex textures of lived experience and to keep testing the fragile boundaries of individual freedom.
Of the rain
~~~~~~~
I am so grateful for the untimely rain
And my waiting hours for sunshine
For the twittering birds
Listening to the most precious song of the hour
They speak the glory of each and every flower
Which were decorated beautifully
With innumerable colorful butterflies
And slowly the salt settles somewhere
Where someone is lighting the diya every evening
Yes the sun will come across gleaming
Each and every morning
*Diya – small oil lamp
Cup of my tea
My cup of black tea lacks sugar
Tastes so sweet filling me with life in every sip
I don’t mix milk in my tea since long
Well nothing happens without reason!
Is it so ?
Perhaps,
who knows?
I kept on filling one after another
Until I realised, it was overflowing
On a note rejection often sung in tables of cafeteria
Unnoticed in some corner
Blotting over the tissue paper
So neglected is was every time!
Until it became a sweetener
So perfect it seemed only when I sipped and continue to sip
Just for me!
racing to the bathroom
arthritis, a bad back, old bones
not the recipe for racing to the
bathroom to always be successful
and nothing says life like scooping
shit out of underwear and deciding
wash or put in the trash
a ratio determined by holes and
the waistband
the problem with shitting in boxers
is the debris is never contained
thankfully, this doesn’t happen
that often to me
often enough though that my inner
child laughs and grabs pen and paper
———————————————————-
long conversations with lonely women
muscle relaxers and whiskey
must be a saturday night
remember when the liquor
would flow like wine jesus
made
i suppose i have closed
one too many bars in
my life
had long conversations
with lonely women
who obviously had better
choices than me
that isn’t sour grapes
just reality slapping the
shit taste out of my mouth
yet again
one of these nights
i hope to get so damn high
i forget the first thirty years
of my life
i figure such a conquest
will probably take a needle,
a spoon, a lighter and a little
luck finding a vein
————————————————————-
regardless
a beautiful woman
told me if i believed
in god, my mother
wouldn’t have so
many health problems
i chuckled
asked her if she used
daddy’s trust fund
to get those new
tits
she walked away
disgusted, i enjoyed
the view nonetheless
the tooth fairy is dead,
santa is on strike and
reality is dying by
the second
this world is on fire
and we are doing
nothing but whistling
in the graveyards
hope still exists in
some little corner
of this fragile mind
a soft beauty swears
she will rescue me
from all of this one
day
promises, promises
a fleeting echo of pain
we were all abused
by someone
regardless of wealth
or god or any existence
of sanity
———————————————————–
and what is never coming back
paralyzed with fear
every step a reminder
of what was lost
and what is never
coming back
no need to apologize
we will be dead soon
enough
i can hear you crying
yourself to sleep each
night
these are the nights
where i wish the pain
pills were better or these
drugs were actually strong
enough to take away
everything
didn’t think the majority
of my late forties was going
to be spent cleaning up shit
and piss in bathrooms
but alas
there is the life of a poet
knowing the roses grow
better in shit and learn to
enjoy the prick of every
thorn
———————————————————-
left behind to die
it starts as a dull ache
eventually, it overtakes
the body
there is no point in crying
prayer gets you nowhere
left behind to die
there is no other way
to sugarcoat this bullshit
broken bones
shattered soul
a lonesome saxophone
wails in the background
try to find a vein in the dark
there used to be this neon soul
that would wander in and out
of your life at the oddest times
that soul has left
just like the rest of them
another night to drown
your sorrows in a dry
county
i guess the bath salts
are what we have left
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in the suburbs, probably forever. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Mad Swirl, Yellow Mama and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days taking care of his disabled mother, wondering which of them will die first. He has a blog, evil delights, he sometimes writes on, given a few free seconds here and there. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
I’m your friend
The time has come
When dreams of traveling appear
Other people, other women
I guess there’s room for me too
And it’s even cooler
When you say
That the place is by the sea..
Because everyone knows me here
The tenants of the building and the white walls
Always the same old story
Where my image and likeness are
And when you ask me how it’s going
I say everything the same old way, my old man!
I’m still your friend!
Neven Duzevic is from Zagreb, Croatia.