Teachers' flexible language uses in the multilingual primary English classroom in Sweden

The linguistic landscape of Sweden is becoming increasingly multilingual, contributing to the complexity of language education in Sweden today in terms of both policy and classroom practice. When it comes to English, a compulsory school subject in Sweden introduced at some time during school years 1-3, currently there is very little research concerning multilingual classrooms, particularly in the Swedish mainstream primary school. This paper is part of an exploratory pilot study within a doctoral research project on English for young learners in multilingual contexts in Sweden, aiming to address this research gap.

The pilot study focuses on language instruction and the teacher's language use. Material was collected through classroom observations of English lessons, field notes and interviews with the participating teachers at two schools with predominantly multilingual pupils. This paper elucidates examples from the teachers during teacher-led interaction from a year 5 class and a year 6/7 class of newly-arrived pupils where the teachers employed various linguistic and multimodal resources with the purpose of developing both the pupils' English and Swedish, particularly in terms of comprehension and meaning. While in Sweden attitudes towards an English-only approach are generally positive, the examples show that the English classroom in these contexts is not an English-only space, instead more flexible language uses are employed in deliberate ways. These examples will be discussed in relation to the findings from the teacher interviews as well as translanguaging ideologies and their relevance for the current context.