Home Language Teaching for Immigrant Pupils in Sweden

Abstract

If one parent has a mother tongue other than Swedish and uses this language in the daily interaction with the child, he or she is a preschool child with a home language other than Swedish. With school age children, the definition is built on the language habits of the child rather than the parents. Such definitions do not indicate which is the child's best language. According to the official statistics (SM S 1979:10), there were 286,300 children registered in Swedish day nurseries and family day homes by February 1, 1978, 38 percent of all children born between 1971 and 1977. In the fall of 1978, there were 14,300 children with home language other than Swedish registered (5%), most of them in municipal day nurseries and part-time nursery schools (SM S 1979:19). Various estimates of a total population according to different definitions are given in Table 1. Of the registered children, 7,750 or 54 percent were given home language practice, most (91%) at least four hours per week. However, as many parents both work, it has been considered necessary to form homogenous language groups whenever possible, and to hire staff with the same mother tongue as the children. Otherwise, the children will learn mainly Swedish, and there will be problems of communication in

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