Accommodating beginner language learners in level-based language introduction
Creators: name: Hedman, Christina
name: Cunningham, Una
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Science Policy

description: The paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork in a Language Introduction program for recently arrived students in an upper secondary school in Sweden. In a short period of time, this program prepares students for using Swedish as an academic language, in order to enter a national program. One response to this challenge is that schools allocate the recently arrived students to level-based groups. We contribute new knowledge about this practice by focusing on the nature of teacher support in one beginner group and one more advanced group, based on ethnographic data from classroom observations and interviews. Drawing from language scaffolding theory, we show how the teachers in both groups initiated collaborative dialogue. This dialogue was most prominent in peer work in the advanced group, affording space for flexible language use and affective-relational dimensions. The peer work seemingly compensated for less teacher bridging to students’ previous language resources, less explicit feedback, and less use of multimodality. The findings contribute new knowledge about how teachers accommodate beginner learners in their everyday teaching, although accommodating all students was not feasible. Other possible ways of grouping and supporting learners while closely attending to learner development could be explored further. Artikeln bygger på etnografiskt fältarbete i ett språkintroduktionsprogram för nyanlända elever i en gymnasieskola i Sverige. Detta program förbereder eleverna på att använda akademisk svenska för att på kort tid kunna komma in på ett nationellt gymnasieprogram. En respons på denna utmaning är att skolorna delar in de nyanlända eleverna i nivåbaserade grupper. Vi bidrar med ny kunskap om denna praktik genom att fokusera på hur lärarstödet ser ut i en nybörjargrupp och en mer avancerad grupp, baserat på etnografiska data från klassrumsobservationer och intervjuer. Med utgångspunkt i teori om språklig stöttning visar vi att lärarna i båda grupperna initierade kollaborativ dialog. Denna samarbetsdialog var mer framträdande i elevdialog i smågrupper i den avancerade gruppen, vilket gav utrymme för flexibel språkanvändning och affektiva-relationella dimensioner. Det arbetet kompenserade till synes för en minskning av lärarens överbryggning till elevernas tidigare språkliga resurser samt minskade användning av explicit återkoppling och multimodalitet. Resultaten bidrar med ny kunskap om lärares sätt att tillmötesgå nybörjarelever i deras dagliga undervisning, fastän det inte var möjligt att tillmötesgå alla elevers behov. Andra möjliga sätt att gruppera och stödja eleverna och deras utveckling skulle kunna undersökas ytterligare. Newly arrived students aged 16–20 years in Sweden have many different language backgrounds, but they are taught together in the Language Introduction program at upper secondary school. Their aim is to learn enough Swedish to use Swedish as an academic language that will allow them to proceed to regular upper secondary studies. If they cannot enter a national program in the timeframe set, some of them may risk having to leave Sweden. The present study is based on ethnographic fieldwork, set in a school where the recently arrived students were placed in two groups to study Swedish as a second language, according to their Swedish language proficiency. As this is a relatively common but under-researched practice, our focus was on how the teachers instructed the students in the two groups, in dialogue and task design. We found that the teachers in both groups initiated collaborative dialogue, where the teacher in the beginner group used more multimodal resources, explicit feedback, and included more of the students’ previous language resources than the teacher in the advanced group. In the advanced group, students seemingly compensated for this more limited teacher support by helping each other in English or other shared languages, also providing a relational-affective space. We discuss how learners’ prior linguistic knowledge can be given value and legitimacy in more systematic ways, suggesting work on multilingual language awareness. Future studies could also more systematically look into learner development while investigating how teachers accommodate beginner language learners in level-based groups.