I det här kapitlet undersöker vi den återkommande metaforen språket som nyckel och hur den används i både politisk argumentation och nyanlända migranters berättelse om sin tillvaro här och nu, och i deras förhoppningar inför framtiden. I kapitlet visar vi hur de nyanlända tillmäter språkinlärning stor betydelse. Språ...

I det här kapitlet fokuserar vi på sfi, lärarnas uppfattning om sfi:s uppdrag och hur det iscensätts i mötet mellan lärare och elever. Vi illustrerar den mångfacetterade roll som sfi spelar för det övergripande målet att eleverna ska ges språkliga verktyg för ett aktivt deltagande i samhället. Sfi organiserars i ett spännings...

Through the study of pedagogic discourse and practice in introductory classes (ICs) aimed at new migrant students at a linguistically diverse primary school in Sweden, we discuss pedagogic principles and power dynamics, drawing on Bernstein’s conceptual frame. Our ethnographic data consist of teacher interviews and observatio...

Det här är en vägledning om språkinlärning – med konkreta tips om hur du som har svenska som förstaspråk kan planera möten, sköta rekrytering och hantera det dagliga arbetet på en arbetsplats där det talas många språk.

Du får också veta mer om hur du kan öka den ömsesidiga förståelsen i kommunikationen med människor som...

The study presented in this paper focuses on three evangelical churches in Sweden and their engagement with migrants. The goal of the study is to explore how professionals engage with migrants in their everyday work in a multilingual environment. To this end, data from interviews with church professionals are triangulated wit...

It has recently been suggested that bilingualism, rather than age of acquisition, is what underlies less than nativelike attainment in childhood L2 acquisition. Currently, however, the empirical evidence in favor of or against this interpretation remains scarce. The present study sets out to fill this gap, implementing a nove...

This article presents an edited conversation between Kenneth Hyltenstam, Christopher Stroud, Linus Salö and David Karlander. Its main topic is the rise and consolidation of bilingualism research/multilingualism research as a demarcated subject area in Swedish academe. The article delves into this history via the professional,...

Focusing on the narrations of Omid – a Mother Tongue (MT) teacher of Arabic in a Swedish primary school – we analyze discursive constructions of Sweden, multilingualism and MT instruction in interview data and fieldnotes from parenting courses aimed at migrant parents. Omid constructed a performed role model – based in succes...

This article aims to explore continuity and change in adult migrants’ experiences of Swedish for immigrants (SFI), a state-subsidised language programme for basic Swedish. The study has a longitudinal and comparative design, drawing on discourse analysis of qualitative interviews conducted with language learners in 2001/2002 ...

Ordförrådets storlek har ett starkt samband med läsförmåga och framgång i skolan. Projektet har därför satsat särskilt på att strukturera och systematisera elevernas möjligheter att tillägna sig ett relevant ordförråd relaterat till skolans alla ämnen. Dokumentet Ordförråd och skolspråk beskriver utgångspunkterna och...

Det räcker att kasta en blick på olika slags skyltar för att se att svenskan är det språk som har högst status i Sverige. Det numera lagstadgade främjandet av flerspråkighet yttrar sig fortfarande oftast som upptejpade lappar.

The chapter explores the lived experience of students with diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds in Swedish higher education through in-depth interviews with three students who migrated to Sweden. Reflections on language ideologies and practices across social spaces in multilingual university settings are discussed. ...

This paper explores the relatively unique educational design of the school subject Swedish as a second language (SSL) through ethnographic fieldwork in three linguistically diverse schools in Sweden. A main point is the importance of carefully considering the local educational context in relation to its organizationa...

Standard language cultures are characterised by beliefs in idealised standard forms of the language in question. In this paper, these beliefs are connected to the concepts of referee design and speech community, through analysis of how Swedish adolescents reflect upon and self-assess their language proficiencies. The data con...

An important dimension of learning a second language (L2) is to build up a store of recurring word combinations that native speakers use. These so-called formulaic sequences (FSs) serve many functions in fluent language use. One category of FSs is collocations, defined in the present thesis as combinations of a verb and a nou...

This paper targets the aim of 'strengthening the students' multilingualism' in a second language subject in Sweden, Swedish as a second language (SSL), which represents a relatively rare L2 design internationally. The study investigates how ideological space for multilingualism with regard to this aim opens implementational s...

We compare native (L1) and non-native (L2) word-final plosive voicing in Swedish. The L1 of the L2 speaker (Flemish) does not have word-final plosive voicing contrasts. In order to assess the effectiveness of a common approach to L2 instruction, L2 speech was elicited under two conditions: either unassisted or by playing an e...

In this chapter, we study face-to-face meetings between students and supervisors, where the focus of the meeting is supervision of academic writing. The aim of the study is to examine how students and supervisors in Sweden and Finland collaborate in order to improve the students’ texts and to discuss academic writing. Using c...

Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-native learners of a second language (L2) similarly draw on expectations, and whether these expectations are based on learners’ L1 or L2 knowledge. We approach this question by studying inverse preference effects on lexical encodin...

Denne artikkelen gir en oversikt over norsk og svensk forskning på andrespråksskriving fra det siste tiåret. Tre hovedområder som har generert flere studier og nye perspektiver i de to landenes andrespråksforskning, er skilt ut: 1) Forskning relatert til skolefag, sjangere og registre, 2) Forskning på ordforråd i en skolekont...

This study examines possible crosslinguistic influence on basic word order processing in a second language (L2). Targeting Swedish V2 word order we investigate adult German learners (+V2 in the L1) and English learners (-V2 in the L1) of Swedish who are matched for proficiency. We report results from two offline behavioural t...

This article explores language use and investment among Somali-speaking children and adolescents in Sweden, through group interviews and survey data. Our findings indicate that there are incentives to invest in Somali language learning considering the reported language use patterns and the expressed positive attitudes towards...

Hur definierar man vilka språkliga kunskaper som behövs för att vara medborgare? Vi menar att detta inte går. Istället verkar språktest för medborgarskap handla om det symboliska värdet av att ställa krav på en viss grupp i samhället, skriver språkforskarna Maria Rydell och Tommaso Milani.

This study investigates if participation in mother tongue instruction (henceforth MTI) impacts the biliteracy proficiency of young bilinguals, drawing on examples from Somali–Swedish bilinguals and Somali MTI in a Swedish school context. In the study, biliteracy was operationalized as reading proficiency and vocabulary knowle...

Syftet med föreliggande studie har varit att öka kunskapen om konnektorbruket i svenska hos vuxna inlärare. Mer specifikt har studien fokuserat på berättande/beskrivande texter som samlats in vid fyra tillfällen under en termins universitetskurs på GERS-nivå A1. Med utgångspunkt i bland annat modeller av diskurskompetens har ...

This paper reports on the status of learner corpus anonymization for the ongoing research infrastructure project SweLL. The main project aim is to deliver and make available for research a well-annotated corpus of essays written by second language (L2) learners of Swedish. As the practice shows, annotation of learner texts is...

In this article, we take the concept of equality as the basis to discern and discuss discourses in scholarly texts within the Swedish academic field on the school subject Swedish as a second language (SSL) after its introduction in 1995. The study analyzes the types of arguments, their theoretical and empirical under-pinnings...

The current thesis is concerned with constructions and perceptions of what it means to be ‘a competent language user’ in the context of a language programme in basic Swedish called Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). A particular focus is given to the testing and assessment of oral interaction. The prevailing communicative...

Sverige är ett flerspråkigt samhälle. Det är ett faktum som är kännetecknande för både Sveriges historia, samtid och framtid. Vuxna invandrares språkliga kompetens tillmäts i dag ett allt större symboliskt värde. Allt oftare hörs i den politiska debatten krav på språkkompetens, exempelvis i tal om språkplikt och språktest för...

Politiska krav på att invandrare ska lära sig svenska bättre och snabbare dyker upp i debatten med jämna mellanrum. För ett par veckor sedan lanserade Socialdemokraterna “språkplikt”. Maria Rydell ställer sig frågande till detta och pekar på komplexiteten i vuxnas språkinlärning. Möjligheten att lära sig ett nytt språk hänger...

This article investigates the lived experience of language (Busch, 2017) in relation to perceptions of what it means to be ‘a competent language user’. How to define language competence is an ongoing discussion in applied linguistics. However, relatively little attention has been given to the lived experiences of adult migran...

This thesis aims to learn about opportunities for and challenges to the development of multilingual literacies in three forms of education in Sweden and Australia that teach or draw on immigrant languages.  In Sweden mother tongue instruction and multilingual study guidance are in focus and in Australia, a <...

Sweden is a multilingual country: in 2014, 23.8% of students in compulsory schools spoke languages in addition to Swedish. Over 160,000 individuals applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015 many of them children aged 7-16 with the right to education during the asylum-seeking process (Swedish Migration Agency, 2016). While Sweden h...