Kultur–språk–medier
Examensarbete i fördjupningsämnet
Engelska och lärande
15 högskolepoäng, avancerad nivå
Does it help or hinder English language
learners to use Swedish when English is taught
in a multilingual classroom?
Främjas den engelska språkinlärningen av att använda
svenska under engelskundervisningen i ett flerspråkigt
klassrum?
Stephanie Brodén
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.
Table of content
1 Introduction
4
1.1 Purpose statement and research question
5
2 Literature review/background
6
2.1 A report written by The Swedish National Agency of Education
6
2.2 Third language acquisition
7
3 Methods
11
3.1 The chosen schools
12
3.2 Observation
12
3.3 Interview
12
4 Result
14
4.1 School A14
4.2 School B14
4.3 School A16
4.4 School B18
5 Discussion
21
6 Conclusion
24
References
26
1 Introduction
Even though multiculturalism is very common in the schools in the Malmö area, the teachers do not receive enough education in how to teach children that have Swedish as a second language. My VFU have a very low number of multilingual students in comparison to many other schools in Malmö. Swedish schools are not obligated to introduce English until 3rdgrade.
Little time is devoted to teaching English in my school each week, yet English is taught from grade one. However, the greater part of the English lesson revolves around translating things in to Swedish.
That raised the question about How do you teach English to children with Swedish as a
second language? Can you use the same method as on my VFU (my school for internship)?
Or might it be beneficial for children in a multilingual classroom to have lesser Swedish in their English lessons? I have heard from fellow students that they do not start with English until year 3 in their schools, with the excuse that “they do not have Swedish as their first language and we will try to avoid involving another language as far as possible to not confuse them”.
A report from the Swedish National Agency of Education shows a big gap between the grades of native Swedish children and children with a foreign background (Skolverket, 2004), which points to qualitative differences between schools. According to the study concluded by SNAE – the Swedish National Agency of Education 36% of the students with a foreign language failed to pass in all subjects in year 9 (Skolverket, 2004). So again it raised the question whether it could benefit the students with foreign backgrounds not to have to translate from their first language to Swedish and then to English, if it could help them to more easily reach the learning goals stated in Lgr11.
From anecdotal evidence it seems like a lot of the English instruction in Swedish schools is focused on translation, to make sure the learners understand the Swedish connection to the language. According to a Swedish nationwide survey made by The Swedish National Agency
of Education, more than half of the 5th graders in the survey indicated that they have learned
as much –or more- English outside of school as in it (Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2014, p. 5). And according to the 4thgraders in Sundqvist & Sylvén study they spend more hours devoted to
English outside of school than there are English hours in class (Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2014, p. 17). Does that mean that Swedish schools push English aside in class and leaves the English
language to be taught by media at home? And in that case could we avoid that by teaching English in a more efficient way than by just focusing on translation? Perhaps you do need to translate, but maybe by explaining English with other English words, pictures and so on would be a better way?
1.1 Purpose statement and research questions
The purpose of this study is to find out whether pupils English language learning benefits from using Swedish during the English lessons.
Some research questions connected to this investigation are:
Is it beneficial for ESL learners to exclude Swedish as far as possible when learning English?
2 Literature Review/Background
In this part of the study I will present some literature background to help define and unpack some key terms. The chosen literature will explain what is meant by multilingualism, who falls under the term immigrant and what is the difference between second and third language acquisition.
2.1 A report written by The Swedish National Agency of Education
The Swedish National Agency of Education reported in 2004, Elever med utländsk bakgrund that states that approximately 14,5% of the children finishing 9thgrade in 2003 were students
with another mother tongue than Swedish. According to the report concluded by the Swedish National Agency of Education (2004) the gathered statistics show that students with foreign background more often leave school without complete grades. These results are not unique for Sweden, but are repeatedly shown in OECD- countries (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) according to Skolverket.
The Swedish National Agency of Education – SNAE – compared students’ grades, divided into four categories:
1. Native speaking Swedish students
2. Children born in Sweden but have immigrant parents 3. Children that immigrated here before school starts 4. Children who immigrated here after school start.
The category that showed the biggest difference in knowledge are children who immigrated here after school had started, as much as 36% of those children finished school without competence to begin upper secondary school, which is quite a difference to category 1 with 9%, and category 2 and 3 with both 15% who failed to graduate with competence for upper secondary school (Skolverket, 2004).
It seems to be a different in performance in most subjects, which might be understandable considering they are taught in Swedish, but there was a difference in English performances as well. Though in English there is not so much that differs category 1 from 2 and 3, in category
1 4,6% fails to pass in English, in category 2 and 3 7,4% fail to pass. The one that stands out the most again are the students who migrated to Sweden after the school start. As much as 26,3% of them did not pass English in the 9thgrade in year 2003 (Skolverket, 2004).
It can therefore be concluded that L2 learners who moved here after school start are the ones who need the most support to be able to pass school with complete grades, whether it is because of the language barrier or if it is based on the lack of subject knowledge has not been concluded.
2.2 Third language acquisition
Third language acquisition in the school context is becoming more widespread because of the growing trend of introducing a foreign language from an earlier age (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 2). A second foreign language is introduced at the end of primary school or in secondary school (ibid). In Sweden the first foreign language presented to children is English, and the second foreign language presented are either French, Spanish or German.
Still Cenoz claims that, in spite of being a common phenomenon, third language acquisition and trilingualism at school have received relatively little attention compared to the extensive literature on bilingual education and second language acquisition in the school context (ibid). There is a difference between third language acquisition and trilingual education, third language acquisition in the school context refers to learning an L3 as a subject and trilingual education refers to the use of three languages as languages of instruction (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 3). However, if a program uses two languages as the languages of instruction and the
students’ mother tongue as a subject rather than three languages of instruction, then it can still be regarded as a trilingual program (ibid).
The acquisition of one or more foreign languages in a monolingual context “has different educational implications than the acquisition of languages spoken in the community” (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 5). As a result of the mobility of todays’ population and the spread of English in the world there has been an increasing number of multilingual communities (ibid). This will most likely reduce the number of the traditional monolingual communities there are, there is still differences between acquiring a language in contact or a foreign language (ibid).
Apart from different opportunities for language exposure, attitudes towards learning a second (or third) language could be different if the target language is spoken in the community or not. The use of the target language(s) in the community also has obvious implications regarding the students’ need to communicate in the different languages and their motivation to learn them. (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 5)
There is a need to take into consideration the status of the different languages at the
community, internationally and the ethnic identity tied to the languages when planning and developing third language acquisition in school contexts (ibid). The time devoted to the language in school will be determined by the role of different languages in society and the availability of teachers who are proficient in the different languages (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 6). According to Cenoz, most research studies confirm that third language learners shows an advantage over second language learners and “attribute these advantages to highly developed learning strategies, metalinguistic awareness and communicative sensitivity” (ibid). However, Cenoz also suggest that third language acquisition in school contexts could potentially affect linguistic development in the L1 and L2 and also cognitive/academic development, though this area of research has attracted less attention (ibid). Cenoz mentions a considerable number of research studies made between year 1997-2000 focusing on switching and code-mixing in order to explore the mental process taking place when producing the L3 (ibid). The results of these studies shows that the learners often receive help from their L2 language as a “default supplier” for L3 production.
Jasone Cenoz (2013) states that third language acquisition – TLA – is a quite new area of research that has rapidly expanded lately and has often been neglected in studies about second language acquisition. Cenoz (2013) believes that students that have gone through the process of learning a second language should be more experienced language learners so they have most likely developed certain skills to achieve the task of learning a new language. There is of course a difference when acquiring the second language. Some children might learn their L1 and L2 simultaneously, and some might not even use their L2 language that often, while some use both languages every day (Cenoz, 2013).
Cenoz (2013) also investigates whether it is easier for bilinguals and multilinguals to acquire an additional language. According to folk wisdom it is supposed to be easier, but what does science say? Based on research carried out in Spain Cenoz states “Four studies were
conducted in bilingual schools in three bilingual communities in Spain […] bilingual learners outperformed monolingual learners in the third language, English” (2013, p. 74). Most of the researchers he refers to came to the conclusion that bilinguals or multilinguals performs better than monolinguals when learning a new language. But not all of them agree with this. Sanders & Meijers (1995) did not find any differences between bilingual or monolingual students in the acquisition of English. According to Cenoz “these studies comparing immigrant learners of an L3 and non-immigrant learners of an L2 tend to confirm the advantages of bilingualism when learning an L3, but the results are not as conclusive as in the case of the bilingual programmes. However, it is important to remember that immigrant learners may also be at a disadvantage because of their socioeconomic status or other social and cultural factors” (Cenoz, 2013, p. 75). The advantages documented for bilinguals over monolinguals have been explained in different ways that all comes down to three factors, metalinguistic awareness, learning strategies and the broader linguistic repertoire that is available for the student that has already obtained more than one language (ibid).
To sum up, bilingualism has in most cases a positive effect on third language acquisition. However, language acquisition is a complex phenomenon with many factors to influence (such as passive or active bilinguals, socioeconomic status or other social and cultural factors), therefore it is difficult to obtain a conclusive result (Cenoz, 2013, p. 76).
Sánchez (2015) researched if the background languages L1 and L2 are activated in parallel with L3 English during word construction attempts involving verbal forms, and if so, which is the source language of blending? L1 or L2? Her study consisted of 93 learners with Spanish as their L1 and German as their L2. Half their classes were taught in German but their parents were Spanish native speakers with minimum or no knowledge about German, hence the students did not practice their German as much (Sánchez, 2015, p. 257). Their learning of English started in 4thgrade, when they were 9 years old. Sánchez started collecting data every
May month regularly in four years’ time after they started first learning English (ibid). The procedure looked like this: the children were given an instructional task in English (the target language) followed by some clarification in their native language- Spanish. The learners were then given 15 minutes to write the narrative depicted in the story with the help of pictures presented to them the whole time, though without any help from dictionaries, grammar books or other reference tools as the task explained. Sánchez found out when concluding the results that the students L2 language- German- was constantly blending and became the supplier language in the construction of verbal forms. Examples of some of the
most recurrent blendings: some students wrote compt instead of the English comes, since the German word is kommt. Mostly the learners took “help” from the German when they were unsure of how to bend the words; the word eat became eaten from the German word essen, and the English word have became haven from the German word haben. No connections to the L1 language were detected (Sánchez, 2015, p. 259). Here it is concluded that when the learners were unsure about how to bend the word in the target language they took the information from their L2 language (Sánchez, 2015, p. 264).
Sánchez started with the research with the question of whether the background languages L1 and L2 activated in parallel with L3 English during word construction attempts involving verbal forms. The answer is yes; the learners do use one of their background languages – L2 – during word constructions, but why they do it is nothing that Sánchez could answer.
3 Methods
This section presents the methodogical choices I made for this paper. It is now time to collect the research data that Walliman (2006) refers to as the “raw material of research”. One way of gathering data can be by self-completion- or closed format questionnaires. Self-completion questionnaires are an easy way to question a large number of cases (Walliman, 2006, p. 88). Besides, the personal influence of the researcher is limited and since the questions are not asked in person you can ask embarrassing questions with a rather fair chance of getting a truthful answer (ibid). Possible disadvantages of self-completed questionnaires could be that they might limit the range and scope of questioning, it is best to make them as short as possible since they can be rather unpopular (ibid). It can also be a rather low response rate (ibid). In closed-format questions the respondents must choose from a choice or given answers. The advantage with this method is that the questionnaires are quick to answer and they require no special writing skills from the respondent, the downside with closed-format questionnaires is the limited range of possible answers (Walliman, 2006, p. 90).
Another method for data collection is interviews. While questionnaire surveys are relatively easy to organize and they prevent the personality of the interviewer to affect the results, they do have certain limitations as pointed out in the previous text. Walliman (2006) states that “because of their flexibility, interviews are a useful method of obtaining information and opinions from experts during the early stages of your research project” (Walliman, 2006, p. 92). Walliman (2006) writes that interviews are particularly useful when obtaining qualitative data, as the interviewer you will be able to judge the quality of the answers and you may notice if a question is not fully understood. Though the most important thing when you are preparing an interview is to know exactly what you want to achieve from it, if you are going to audio-record the interview or take notes, and also to know what you intend to do with the information you have collected afterwards (Walliman, 2006, p. 93). Another way of
collecting data is through observations. Observations are mostly used when the researcher want to record conditions, events and activities through looking rather than asking (Walliman, 2006, p. 95). As an observer you should take a detached stance by not getting involved and try to remain ‘invisible’ during the event (Walliman, 2006, p. 95). Sometimes people will easier demonstrate their knowledge by their action in the field than by verbally explaining their knowledge (Walliman, 2006, p. 96). According to The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (2005) observations are the fundamental base of all research methods (p. 729)
I have decided to collect my raw material from interviews in combination with classroom observations. I have chosen to start with the observation of the class and the teacher during one lesson before I did my interview. I will try to be as “invisible” as possible during the lesson to try to minimize the influence of having me there. The interviews are made to broaden my view and to get the teachers’ perspective of the classroom lesson. Observations are made first to develop my own opinion of the lesson before I get to know the teachers’ opinion.
3.1 The chosen schools
The names from the observations and interviews are artificial and are not their real names. For simplicity sake I decided to name the schools School A and School B.
I combined Interview and observation as a method to discover potential differences between how the teacher experiences the results of his/her lessons and how I see it as an outside spectator. I chose to observe one school with a high rate of students with Swedish as their L2 language, and one school with a low rate of students with Swedish as their L2 Language. I also interviewed one teacher from each class. Both the classes were in year 3. This was done to discover possible differences in teachers’ point of view, teaching differences and possibly differences in their language approach. Each class I observed for only one occasion. One class lasted for 20 minutes and the other one lasted for about 50 minutes. When I first met the different teachers they all agreed that speaking English as much as possible in class was of the students’ best interest. As one of the Beatrice expressed before; the pupils should “bada i språket” [my translation: bathe in the language]. All of them stated that they tried as far as possible to speak English during the English lessons and that it is the students who wants a translation and often answers in Swedish. Yet, I did not once hear a student asking the teachers for a translation during my observation.
3.2 Observation
Observations demands that the researcher plays a number of roles and uses a number of techniques to collect data (Baker, 2006, p. 172). The level of involvement between observer and students can vary, but the researcher need to always remember his/her primary role as a
researcher and remain detached enough to collect and analyze relevant data (Baker, 2006, p. 172). I will try to stay as “invisible” as possible when I am in the class, my goal is simply for them to forget that I am there, hopefully I will get as accurate view of the learning
environment as possible.
3.3 Interviews
I interviewed the teachers of the two classes I visited. I observed them for one lesson each and interviewed them after each lesson. I chose to start with observing the class and the teacher during one lesson to get my own opinion of the teaching and learning outcome before I interviewed them. The interview was made to get a broader view and to get the teacher
4 Result
4.1 School A
There was a total of 27 students in the class. I meet the teacher Anna out in the school yard at break before class. She was very social and talked very openly about everything, she
mentioned that about 98% of the students at the school had a different mother tongue that Swedish. She explained that they use a lot of songs and pictures in their education because of that. We entered the classroom along with the students, she guided me to a seat in the back of the class. She told the students who I was and that I was here to observe their English lesson. The English lesson start with a short song (without music), then they retold the day, date, month, year and season- as they do every morning but in Swedish. Both the children and the teacher say “thirty once” instead of “thirty first”. Afterwards they moved on to today’s theme “in the classroom”, the teacher continues to speak English with the learners for a while longer, though whenever she “thought aloud” she switched to Swedish, she also paused a while and started talking to me in Swedish, telling me about a symphony orchestra most of the children in the class participated in. Then she turned back to the lesson. Anna start giving the
instructions in Swedish: “Rubriken är In the classroom”, they are shown some pictures of things found in a classroom on the smartboard with the correct word underneath, now they will say the word aloud together. Anna switches completely back to Swedish for further instructions “man sätter en eller ett framför orden på svenska, vad sätter man framför orden på engelska? [...] Vad betyder nu a pupil? [...] När ska det vara a och an?” This first part of the lesson lasted for approximately 10 minutes, the children are now supposed to write down the words in their writing-book, this also takes about 10 minutes, giving it 20 minutes total for the entire lesson.
4.2 School B
I met the teacher Beatrice in her classroom before class. She showed me to a seat in the back of the classroom right before the students entered. There was a total of 25 students in the class, though during the English lessons they have divided the class in two, half the class have
handicraft while the other half have English. Unfortunately, Beatrice found out that the handicraft teacher had called in sick this time therefore the whole class had to be together during this English lesson- leaving half of the class to repeat it all over again since they had
this lesson earlier this week. Beatrice has prepared some notes on the Whiteboard for the children to see when they arrive to class:
”Lektionens mål: att kunna läsa och förstå enkla meningar på engelska Rektangeln har fyra lika långa sidor.
Rektangeln har två långa och två korta sidor.
Rektangeln har fyra hörn, och vinklarna är trubbiga.”
(Translation:)
The goal with the lesson: to be able to read and understand simple sentences in English. The rectangle has four equally long sides.
The rectangle has two long and two short sides.
The rectangle has four corners, and the angles are blunt.
She starts the lesson with the math written on the board- in Swedish. After about 10 minutes the children were done and were now going to read the goal written on the board. Then the English lesson started for real, Beatrice started with mixing Swedish and English a bit: “Ni som inte hade engelska förra gången take out your pencils and rubbers, de som skulle varit på träslöjd kan läsa nu”. However, she got more and more comfortable with English as time goes on. She continues with the Swedish a bit more while the children collect the right material. She then starts to give instructions in English “You have had some homework in English, I will say them in Swedish as usual and you will say them in English” this only takes a few minutes. The vocabulary test was on animals (cat, dog, horse, hamster, rat, spider etc.) after the test Beatrice says in a bit insecure English “Ben you can collect the books and give them to me”. Then she repeated the animals again “What’s fågel in English?”, the students were to answer the word -and even spell them- out loud then Beatrice wrote them on the board. Then she said “Read with me” and everyone read the words together, “now read without me” and just the students were to read together. The teacher uses minimum Swedish at this point. After the listening exercise is complete they move on to the next part of the lesson, she projects a PowerPoint document on the smartboard, reading “What is a thing?” She reads it aloud as a question then the students were to answer. They named different things (pencil, rubber, ruler, basketball etc.). Beatrice then said “now name three things to your neighbor”. Giving them about 30 seconds to tell each other three different things. I listened to the students closest to me when they complete the task:
Student 1: Pencil and eraser. Student 2: What’s an eraser? Student 1 Holds up his eraser. Student 2: Aah.
Time's up.
Together they now do an exercise on the smartboard The text is written on top of a picture “what is this? It’s a bag, what is this? [...]”. After that the teacher plays a song from YouTube on the smartboard: What do you see? The song was about 4 minutes long, the children grew tired of the song after about 30 seconds, then a few of them started to complain about the song, saying to Beatrice that it’s for younger pupils (but they said it in Swedish). One of the
students in the first row started to hold his hands over his ears and said “De här e för treåringar!” (translation: “This is for three year olds!”). After the song Beatrice had a long explanation in Swedish of why she chose to bring songs to the lesson. She then continued with the lesson. The students were now to translate the words from the song (airplane, bike, truck, firetruck, police car etc.). One of the students started protesting here, telling the teacher that it spells airplane, not aeroplane, here Beatrice explained in Swedish that some words are spelled differently depending of which English country you’re from. Now the pupils are given the task to discuss what kind of balls they know (snowball, basketball etc.), they are given 30 seconds to discuss it with their friend. Then the teacher ask each pair of students to say three balls per group. Afterwards they listen to a song about balls, the students are more positive to the song this time. One student even stands up and starts to dance, Beatrice encourages the student and more of them join in. Now the pupils took out their English books and started reading the text together. They got some of the words as vocabulary homework until next time. If we exclude the first ten minutes of the lesson when the pupils were given a math exercise in Swedish, the English lesson lasted for about 50 minutes.
4.3 School A
I already meet Anna out at the schoolyard before class. She seemed to be very open with everything and talked about everything at once and made it hard to keep up. She
She mentioned that the students at that school originally did not start learning English until year 4, but due to the new curriculum (Lgr11) that arrived in 2011, they now have to start with English in year 3. Anna also mentioned that she did not particularly like teaching English and that she had only taught children in K-1 for many years now and was therefore not used to teaching English. In fact, she did not plan the English lessons herself, the resource teacher Alice, did. And it was also Alice who I interviewed since they both thought that she knew more about the subject and the goals of the lessons. Before class Anna also told me that as much as 98% of the children at that school had another mother tongue than Swedish, therefore their whole school system is based on an experience based learning, which means that the children need to read, see, feel and touch everything they learn as far as possible to live the language. And they try to take this learning style with them when they teach English as well, according to Anna.
How long have you been working as a teacher?
Anna told me that she had been working as a teacher for 16 years. Alice also told me that Anna had been working as a preschool teacher at this school for seven years but Alice did not mention how long she had been a teacher herself.
Do you feel that your knowledge of language learning is sufficient?
Anna did not feel her knowledge of language learning was sufficient.
However, Alice felt secure in her knowledge and since it was Alice who planned the lessons they both seem to feel that was enough.
At what year do you start teaching English at this school?
They start teaching English at year 3.
- Do you feel it’s appropriate to start at that time or do you feel it to be too late/early?
As Anna said before class: the students on that school originally did not start practice English until year 4, but due to the new curriculum (Lgr11) that arrived in year 2011, they now have to start with English in year 3 instead. They did not seem very pleased with this fact.
How many minutes are devoted to English every week?
They have approximately 20 minutes devoted to English every week. They don’t want to add more English, they feel that 20 minutes is enough, both Alice and Anna thinks these children need to focus on learning Swedish instead.
Alice claims that the teachers generally try to speak as much English as possible during the English lesson, but she explained (or explained away) that Anna sometimes fell back on Swedish a bit more than the rest of the teachers since she’s spent so many years down in preschool recently and are therefore was not use to teach English.
Who use Swedish most during class? – teacher of students? - In what context are Swedish being used?
Definitely the students, says Alice. They often feel to insecure to answer in English, they need the Swedish as support.
What material do you mostly use in your English class? - Is the material mostly based on English or Swedish?
According to Alice they do not use a textbook at all. They only use songs and PowerPoints. The PowerPoints are mostly based on pictures, since that’s how they work with language on that school.
Would you feel it to be a big difference on how you work with L2 and L1 children during your English lesson?
“Yes, absolutely!” Alice says. Since they only have children with Swedish as their L2
language they all need to think more about the body language, to point at things and the use of pictures and songs. Make gestures whenever they speak comes natural now days, Alice
explains.
4.4 School B
After the lesson the pupils left the classroom to go on break and I stayed in the classroom with Beatrice to begin the interview. We talked a bit before class as well, Beatrice explained that she was interested in language learning and that her major subjects were Swedish, Swedish as a second language and English. She told me that she tried to use as much English in the classroom as possible because the children need to “bada i språket” [my translation: to swim
in the language].
She’s been working as a primary school teacher for 10 years, and before that she worked as a preschool teacher. She’s been working at this school almost 20 years.
Do you feel that your knowledge of language learning is sufficient?
Yes, she absolutely does. Her main subjects during her teacher education were: Swedish, Swedish as a second language and English.
At what year do you start teaching English at this school?
The children usually start learning English in year 1.
Do you feel it’s appropriate to start at that time or do you feel t to bee to late/early?
She feels it is the right time to start at the second semester in year one since the children are so occupied with learning how to read and write the first semester. But she does believe it’s good to start so early as year one, she believes language are important.
Beatrice usually start by making a list of words and thing that the children already know from beforehand one the Whiteboard, just so she knows which level to begin in.
How many minutes are devoted to English every week?
She tries to have at least 45 minutes of English every week, sometimes she takes in a little English during the other classes as well, just as she did with the math this lesson.
What language do you use the most during the English lessons? – English or Swedish?
She tries to talk as much English at the English lessons as possible, but she thinks that it is very important that the pupils’ practices to translate everything in to Swedish. She feels it’s especially important now that a few kids recently arrived from Syria, according to her this is their best opportunity to practice all the simple words even in Swedish - the words that the rest of the class already know in Swedish.
Who use Swedish most during class, teacher of students? - In what context are Swedish being used?
The pupils. Whenever they are unsecure they switch to Swedish, that’s why it’s important to give the pupils many opportunities as possible to orally express themselves in English. However, Beatrice feels that’s its of great importance to translate and to compare everything to Swedish. It’s good for the children and they get to practice grammar as well, and when the words are supposed to begin with a capital letter. The weekdays for example starts with a capital letter in English but not in Swedish.
What material do you mostly use in your English class?
- Is the material mostly based on English or Swedish?
Before she based most of her lessons on textbooks but now days she tries to avoid that and tries to have more practical tasks. The children are given more opportunities to speak and practice the language more orally. She would really want to have Magic as their English book instead of Happy, she thinks the text pieces in Happy are so out of context and the texts lack of flow between the chapters. Both textbooks and her other material are mainly on English.
Would you feel it to be a big difference on how you work with L2 and L1 children during your English lesson?
Yes, the L2 child usually needs more support in Swedish and with pictures. With L2 children she also tries to make more use of her body while teaching, such as pointing and making more expressions.
5 Discussion
Cenoz et al. (2001) separates the two concepts third language acquisition and trilingual
education, meaning that third language acquisition in the school context refers to learning an
L3 as a subject and trilingual education refer to the use of three languages as languages of instruction. We do not have a trilingual education in the ordinary schools in Malmö, but we do have third language acquisition in the schools.
According to Cenoz, most research studies confirm that third language learners shows an advantage over second language learners and “attribute these advantages to highly developed learning strategies, metalinguistic awareness and communicative sensitivity” (Cenoz et al. 2001, p. 6). However, Cenoz also suggest that third language acquisition in school contexts could potentially affect linguistic development in the L1 and L2 and also cognitive/ academic development, though this area of research has attracted less attention (ibid). According to what I have experienced during my observations; the school with over representative
percentage of children with foreign background (School B) did not know how to use English in the same amount as the other school (School A). Even though that class felt a bit more eager to learn, they simply did not have enough time.
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. In that case it would have been a more fair comparison between the two schools.
Cenoz (2013) believes that students that have gone through the process of learning a second language should be more experienced language learners and they have most likely developed certain skills to achieve the task of learning a new language. According to Cenoz (2013) the advantages documented of bilinguals over monolinguals have been explained in different ways that all comes down to three factors, metalinguistic awareness, learning strategies and the broader linguistic repertoire that is available for the student that has already obtained more than one language. However, it is important to remember that immigrant learners may also be at a disadvantage because of their socioeconomic status or other social and cultural factors. Considering that the children at school B had only been learning English in School for about one semester when I came to visit they were remarkably good at it. I do however not know their background and how much English they have been taught at their previous school.
Sánchez research started with the question of whether the background languages L1 and L2 activated in parallel with L3 English during word construction attempts involving verbal forms. It is concluded that when the learners were unsure about how to bend the word in the target language they took the information from their L2 language (Sánchez, 2015, p. 264). The learners do use one of their background languages – L2 – during word constructions, but why they do it is nothing that Sánchez can answer.
I could not see any of this at neither one of the schools. However, School B did not seem to write sentences yet, only words. Therefore, it might be hard to tell whether this would be the case on School B as well when the children are a few years older.
I thought it to be a bit contradictory how they all still emphasized the importance of
translation everything to Swedish when they at the same time strive to use as much English as possible. Since the students seemed to understand English very well. Even if all did not voluntarily speak it, it felt strange to automatically translate that much. Could it perhaps be that the teacher is feeling uncertain that some of the pupils will not ask for a translation if they need it and therefore the teachers automatically just give one anyway? Even though all three of the teachers had the intention to mainly speak English and try to use only material with English words and not Swedish; the translation of words came natural to them. One of the teachers – Anna – was not as comfortable speaking English as for example Beatrice,
therefore Anna sought for support in Swedish more often. Both Beatrice and Alice felt secure in their knowledge of language learning. They all seem to feel that a multilingual child would need more support, both from gestures and pictures, but also from Swedish translations. Anna and Alice did not use any textbooks, they made PowerPoints with pictures and very little text as they felt was appropriate to their students. Were as Beatrice also used PowerPoints (but with more text) she used a textbook as well alongside, though she tried to move the education away from the book. Even though it seemed to be everyone’s attention to use English as far as possible during class, they all agreed that translation to Swedish was of importance for the students. Beatrice felt it was of particular importance now that a few more immigrant children had arrived to her class, according to her, this was their opportunity to learn words in Swedish as well as in English. This statement makes me question a few things, they all agree that the children needed it to learn – but to learn what? To help them learn English? Or Swedish? It felt strange to me that the School A – with 98% of the pupils’ hade Swedish as their L2 language – started learning English as late as 3rdgrade when Cenoz (2013) believes that
students that have gone through the process of learning a second language should be more experienced language learners and they have most likely developed certain skills to achieve the task of learning a new language. If Cenoz is right, the L2 children should not wait until 3rd
grade to learn English. On the contrary, they would already have an advantage of language learning since they would have a broader linguistic repertoire and a metalinguistic awareness that monolingual children lack of. That of course is based on the assumption that the student actually has Swedish as a second language. It’s not that unusual that they are still learning Swedish when they start school and are supposed to learn English as well.
When studying these two classes its very obvious that the teaching of English is very different in different schools and maybe not just because of the different backgrounds of the students but of course also depending on the teachers’ interest in languages. This should be taken in to consideration when watching this result.
6 Conclusion
The aim of the paper is to find out whether it really is necessary to use Swedish during the English lessons and if it might not even be beneficial for children with Swedish as their L2 language to just leave the Swedish out of the English lessons. I also wanted to know the reason why some teachers prefer to use Swedish when teaching English.
Is it beneficial for ESL learners to exclude Swedish as far as possible when learning English?
I did not find out whether or not teachers should exclude Swedish during English lessons during my observations. It is true that the teachers all agreed that it was important to translate everything to Swedish. But, as Beatrice said, it was of particular importance now that a few more immigrant children had arrived to her class because this was an opportunity for them to learn words in Swedish as well as in English. Does Swedish really benefit the learners English language learning? The teachers all mentioned that it was good for the children to translate because it presented them with more opportunities to learn Swedish, they did not say it supported the learners English skills. Therefore I did not feel I got my question answered. It was not until I were to conclude my findings that I realized I was not happy with the answers. If I were to do this research again I would be more specific when I interviewed the teachers.
What reasons do some teachers give for using Swedish when teaching English?
The reason for the Teachers to use Swedish during the English lessons were for the children to learn Swedish, not English. Therefore, I do not see that as a valid argument for using Swedish during the English lessons.
It would be interesting to do a more thorough research that included more schools. But this study had of course its limitations and it would be too much facts to conclude if I were to visit more schools. Next step of this sort of research could be to implement research study where you change the educational approach. Perhaps tutor the teachers to not use Swedish at all and see what result that might give, would there be any differences? Would it be a positive or negative outcome? 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. In that case it would have been a more fair comparison between the two schools.
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