Translanguaging in ESL classrooms in Sweden : from the students’ point of view

Translanguaging, with its connection to second language acquisition (Abrahamsson, 2009), is more useful now than ever, as multicultural classrooms are increasing drastically across the world (Hua, 2014). This is the case for Sweden, in particular, as one fifth of the students have foreign backgrounds (Torpsten, 2018). Bilingualism is, in other words, common in Swedish schools and many studies have investigated the benefits of translanguaging in the Swedish as a second language classrooms. However, few studies have focused on the role of translanguaging in the English classrooms in Swedish upper-secondary schools and none are from the students’ perspective. To fill this gap, this study investigates the students’ attitudes towards translanguaging in the ESL classrooms in Swedish upper-secondary schools. Data was gathered by means of a questionnaire, with 62 participants from separate schools, and a focus group interview, with 4 participants from the same school. The findings show that although research strongly supports the use of translanguaging in second language classrooms, the Swedish students tend to agree with the more traditional view on SLA; namely, only speaking English in the English classroom. Furthermore, this research paper indicates that the teachers, according to the students, share the traditional view, with some exceptions. This paper shows that the translanguaging strategy has not been used enough in the Swedish classrooms that participated in this study and, therefore, the young learners of English are not acquainted with its benefits in SLA