Does it help or hinder English language learners to use Swedish when English is taught in a multilingual classroom?

University essay from Malmö högskola/Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS)

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to find out whether pupils English language learning benefits from using Swedish during the English lessons. I decided to collect my material from interviews in combination with classroom observations. I chose to start with the observation of the class and the teacher during one lesson before I did my interview. It is difficult to draw any conclusions of this with only the two schools I visited. If I were to do it again I would have chosen two schools that both start teaching English at the same age and devote the same amount of time each week to learning English. I did not discover any findings to support my theory that it would be beneficial to exclude Swedish during English lessons, nor did I find the opposite. The teachers from the observations felt it was necessary to use Swedish during the English lessons with the argument that it helped them learn Swedish better. Since that was not exactly my question I felt that my findings were inconclusive.

  AT THIS PAGE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ESSAY. (follow the link to the next page)