Barns mångfaldiga språkresurser i mötet med skolan

This dissertation investigates language proficiency in children aged 6 8 in their contact with school both from an oral and written language perspective. The study is predicated on the current situation in Sweden, where school classes today have a more heterogeneous composition than ever before. This means that the focus of this study is not just on the age and sex of the children but also on their different language backgrounds.

The aim of the dissertation is to map out the development of the oral and written proficiency of both monolingual and bilingual children at the beginning of school, individually and in groups. This study belongs in essence to the field of research known as qualitative school ethnography. Material for the study was gathered during a single school year in a school located in a mid-sized Swedish town. To examine the children s language proficiency, three different analytical instruments were combined to produce more reliable results.

The results show that the children s Swedish proficiency varies in a similar way across the group of informants regardless of language background. With respect to the bilingual children s proficiency in their mother tongue/first language, the results show that only one child had command in a language other than Swedish that was sufficient for his age. The study confirms that a monolingual norm prevails in the school that the study was carried out in, which means that it is no different than other Swedish schools for which previous studies mapped out language relations.

The results also show that the children s different language backgrounds do not affect the interaction pattern during small group activities; however, the age and sex of the children do. The results further show that the choice of small group activities and the formation of heterogeneous small groups allow the children the opportunity to solve tasks in which they can support each other and benefit from each other s different competencies.