Mother Toungue in Education

.Support, Education and Study Guidance

The mother tongue plays a very important part in a child's identity and self-esteem. The mother tongue provides the basis for the child's ability to learn. The child finds it easier to learn their second language and other school subjects. It is of considerable advantage to society if many people are multilingual.

An extensive amount of research confirming the importance of instruction in pupils' mother tongue at pre-school and school level has been collected o­n the NORDBAS database.

What is Mother Tongue Support?
The national curriculum for pre-school education states that children with a mother tongue other than Swedish should be given the opportunity to develop their mastery of that mother tongue. A mother tongue teacher specialising in teaching mother tongue at pre-school level, and who comes from the same cultural background as the children, meets them o­nce or twice every week and leads them in activities such as singing, drawing, play, cutting and gluing, playing games, reading nursery stories in the children's mother tongue. The mother tongue teacher might also lead the whole of the pre-school class in traditional songs and games, thus "translating" the culture for the children from a Swedish background while at the same time strengthening the sense of identity of the children they are working with. Studies have shown that if children are given the chance to develop their mother tongue skills from pre-school age, their academic performance at school will be better; their mother tongue proficiency functions as a bridge between the language spoken at school and the language they speak at home.

Mother Tongue at School - What is Mother Tongue Studies?
Mother Tongue Studies is a school subject in its own right at both compulsory comprehensive and upper-secondary level. The objectives laid down for teaching in this subject is that the courses should contribute to enabling students to benefit as much as...