Accommodating beginner language learners in level-based language introduction

Abstract

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.