The Use of Home Language(s) in Increasingly Linguistically-Diverse EAL Classrooms in Norway

Abstract

English as an additional language (EAL) classrooms are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse. As students along with their teachers no longer seem to share a common language, they are encouraged to adopt a bilingual approach to teaching with the home language (HL) assuming a more prominent role. The purpose of this chapter is to broaden the research lens on HL use in increasingly linguistically diverse EAL classrooms by eliciting the views of in- but also pre-service EAL teachers in adopting a multilingual approach to teaching. The objective is to address the following questions: 1) What do pre- and in-service EAL teachers think of the use of the HL? 2) When do teachers think the HL should be used? 3) How do EAL teachers address the presence of different HLs in the classroom? 4) In what ways could teacher-training programs prepare teachers to work with multilingual students?