Learning a New Language in a New Language

Abstract: Swedish school today is a mixture of children who come from different countries and speak different languages. Due to conflicts and war raging in various parts of the world, the refugee stream of people seeking asylum in Sweden has put much pressure on the schools around the country. Studies show that immigrant children fall behind in the education and that students whose first language is not Swedish do not reach the knowledge requirements and goals for English to the same degree of success as other groups of students. The aim for this thesis was to investigate what teachers in a K-3 English classrooms in Sweden do to support immigrant students, and what can be found in previous research to explain such poor performance. The aim was also to explore what methods teachers report using and how these methods are connected to Lgr11 and previous research. The use of Swedish instead of the target language when teaching English seems to be dominating in the schools. Since research found shows that children tend to use their first language when learning additional languages, the use of Swedish becomes demanding and confusing for the immigrant students: they end up having to learn a new language in a new language.