Signs of language development in the school subject Swedish as a second language

Abstract

In this study, upper secondary school teachers and a researcher are collaborating on planning, implementing, and evaluating research-based teaching, aiming to strengthen multilingual students’ language development and content learning. The collaboration takes place within a commissioned university course where both the teachers and the researcher participate and build on a design research approach. The aim of the study is to describe and explain multilingual students’ language development over the course of four month of a research-based intervention. Two overarching questions, which will be specified later, guide the project:

1. What signs of students’ language development can be identified during the intervention?
2. To what extent can the signs of language development be related to teaching practice?

This poster presents the initial results of a case study involving one student during a teaching sequence in the subject of Swedish as a second language in upper secondary school. The data consists of the student’s written reflections, oral peer interaction, and the oral interaction between student and teacher, both individually and with the rest of the class. Data consists of screen-, video- and audio recording, students’ notes and assignments, classroom observation field notes, and teaching materials. The data forms a sequential and holistic text chain (Holmberg, 2012) of the student’s oral and written verbal utterances during the teaching sequence. Drawing on social semiotics (Halliday, 1993) as a theoretical framework, the linguistic analysis was done inductively and exploratively. The poster will present early results from these analyses, i.e. signs that may show how the student is progressing towards a language that is functional for meaning making within the specific practice of the school subject Swedish as a second language.