Teaching English in Multilingual Classrooms. A Swedish Case Study

Abstract

As recognized by the European Council back in 1995, multilingualism is on the rise of the movement of people across the continents and there is a growing need for the knowledge of several foreign languages to meet the demands of the global society. In Swedish upper secondary schools, one third of students are of immigrant backgrounds and often have several languages besides Swedish in their repertoire. While scholars recognize that students’ background languages should be incorporated in the EFL classroom, there is a lack of relevant research and educational policy documents that can guide Swedish EFL teachers in multilingual contexts, and they need to find their own solutions. The exploratory case study examines a group of multilingual learners of immigrant backgrounds in an English course 6 and investigates how the teaching and learning context looks like in their classroom. The observation and interview data demonstrated that a positive classroom climate and a supportive teacher role were significant aspects of the case. Potential challenges that arose in the data were the students’ reactions to the Swedish educational system, a greater need for more explicit language knowledge for teachers as well as strategies for managing heated discussions in the classroom. Additionally, while there were positive attitudes toward multilingualism there were uncertainties in how the teacher and the students should work with background languages in the EFL classroom. The findings suggest that more work is needed in research, national educational policies, and teacher training programs to support the teaching and learning of English in multilingual settings.