FÖRSTASPRÅK I FÖRSKOLAN
En studie av vilket stöd barn med annat förstaspråk än svenska får på några förskolor i en kommun i Mellansverige
Swedish preschoolFirst language acquisitionSecond language acquisitionLanguage developmentSvensk förskolaFörstaspråksinlärningAndraspråksinlärningSpråkutveckling
The purpose of this study is to see how preschool teachers can support multilingual children and promote their development in their first languages. It was chosen to look at a specific municipality to see how the preschool teachers there work with multilingual children. By using the method of structured interviews, it was learnt that they do, in fact, work actively with multilingual children. The preschool teachers interviewed received the same questions in order to make the answers as comparable and measurable as possible. The results seem to indicate that more resources are needed to fulfil the needs of children with another first language than Swedish. The representatives of the municipality have chosen to concentrate on the two foreign languages that are the most common among the multilingual children in the municipality, viz. Arabic and Somali. Children who have other first language receive no formal training in their first language in preschool. One reason for the modest number of first-language teachers in the municipality ? one in Arabic and one in Somali ? is the fact that it is hard to find and recruit qualified first-language teachers.