English Mother Tongue Instruction in Sweden: Participants and Purposes

Timothy Roberts, senior lecturer in English linguistics at the Department of Languages and Literatures (GU)

Abstract

Every schoolchild in Sweden with ‘a mother tongue other than Swedish’ has the right to a certain amount of instruction in that language (modersmålsundervisning) as stated in law. The subject is typically taught during school hours and has its own syllabus with aims, core content, and criteria for assessment. 

In this seminar, I discuss the extent to which the English as mother tongue subject has become popular for pupils from non-traditional Anglophone backgrounds; that is, how in some areas, children from South Asia outnumber those from ‘Inner Circle’ English countries, i.e., the traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases of English. 

I consider, 

1. if, legally, such pupils actually have the right to mother tongue instruction in English,
2. the extent to which norms in English mother tongue instruction (especially as regards identity and culture) are grounded within those from the Inner Circle, and if so, how this does or does not represent the actual culture and epistemological and ontological positions of particular relevance for those pupils, and
3. how choosing English as a mother tongue affects other languages that could have been chosen instead, as each child is only entitled to mother tongue instruction in a single language.