I grew up in a suburban called Nacka in Stockholm which was an upper-class society. In middle school I didn’t come across any pupils from other countries. It wasn’t until I started gymnasium that I met students that spoke other languages than Swedish. Since I hadn’t met people from other cultures and countries this was quite a shock for me. I only studied with this class for about 4 months, but I learned a lot during this period. When I came to the university I became friends with a guy from Afghanistan and also became good friends with his sister. They’ve thought me a lot about their culture and how they have experienced school in Sweden and all the prejudices that exist in our society.
In the gymnasium we were 25 students in the class, and we were only 3 students that had Swedish as L1. There were students from all over the world in the class which was very interesting for me that hadn’t come across the multilingual classroom yet. Suddenly Swedish wasn’t the language that was spoken by most students when they communicated with each other, which made me feel like an outcast. The roles became reversed. This gave me a better understanding for how they probably felt in the Swedish society. But it wasn’t until I started studying for a teacher that I understood the difficulties this means for the teacher.
One of the difficulties for the teacher is to adapt the lessons so that all the students understand the content. If a student has studied for example in Iran maybe they haven’t learned English yet which means that they are way behind the Swedish students. Since the education is in Swedish and translates to English this will be extra hard for the foreign student. They first have to translate from their own language to Swedish and then to English, this means that their thought process will take longer than a Swedish student. The teacher must have this in mind and give those extra seconds so all the students in the classroom have a chance to answer and keep up.
Another difficulty for the teacher that relates to the previous statement is when they explain a word in Swedish. When a student doesn’t understand a word or a sentence the teacher usually explains in Swedish, which works for the Swedish students but maybe not for the foreign student. If they don’t have a big vocabulary in Swedish yet it’s hard for the teacher to explain something from a third language. I remember when I started to study French in sixth grade and the teacher said that it was similar to the English grammar, I still didn’t understand since I had problem with both Swedish and English grammar. I can imagine that this is how many foreign students feel in the multilingual classroom.
// Caroline Djurfeldt
Caroline Djurfeldt 