Social class and ethnic background in the classrom with a focus on language development

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors ethnicity and social class and how this affects the language development of elementary school students. To be able to fulfill our purpose with this study, we have selected one question to be answered. The following question is: "How can teachers contribute to language development teaching for students with different ethnicities and social classes in the society?". Our information was gathered from two databases with scientific articles accessible for us students in Malmo University. We have used databases Eric ProQuest and ERIC EBSCO. The searching was done in English for a successful finding of relevant sources and a literature search in survey has been done in the Malmo University's library and well-known researchers. The result, conclusion and discussion has shown that second language students in a low social class have poorer conditions and opportunities for improved language development compared to students in a high social class background. This study also shows that these students have a tendency to lack Swedish language knowledge due to low social class in the family background. The result, conclusion and discussion mostly shows that teachers have a hard time to meet second language students of different social class backgrounds in the best way for their language development. Research in the result chapter shows that social class and ethnicity should be taken into account by teachers in their pedagogical planning. In the socially oriented subjects, teachers should higlight the two factors and neutralize them in the teaching. From this, teachers should keep in mind that the two factors can affect students' language development and hence apply this complexity to the didactic question "who?". To prevent differences in the classroom, can genre pedagogy be a solution to include all pupils to encourage language development, regardless of social or ethnic background in the classroom.