The Swedish School Board reported in 2007 that students with a foreign background to a larger extent than Swedish students leave school without grades in one or more subjects in the ninth grade. The report also reveals that during the year 2007/2008 17 percent of elementary school pupils had the right to home language instruction. Students with an other mother tongue than Swedish are considered a separate group that doesn’t perform as well in school. My study investigates how eleven Arabic-speaking ninth-graders at age 15-16 perceive the importance of their mother tongue for learning and identity development. To this purpose I have conducted semi-structured interviews – one comprising six students in group and five individual – in a school in one of the suburbs of Stockholms. The theoretic point of departure for this study has been the social constructivist perspective. The result shows unambiguously that the students consider their mother tongue to be important for the learning and development of the second language. It is principally spoken Arabic that is used for attaining knowledge – the written language, which in Arabic is quite different from the spoken language, has its greatest significance in home language instruction. The result of the study also shows two informants identify themselves as arabs since Arabic is their mother tongue, while the rest of the students identify themselves with the Arabic culture, which constitutes a construction of ethnicity and contributes to demarcations between us and them. LyssnaLäs fonetisk Ordbok - Visa detaljerad ordbok
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-5770 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Amno, Rima |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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