Till Örebro universitet

The purpose of this study is to analyze if textbooks used in Swedish for second language learners incorporate translanguaging and inclusion. The textbooks used in this study are aimed at pupils in Swedish middle school (ages 10-12). The material that we have used and analyzed are the textbooks Språkis – svenska för nyfikna C and Entré elevbok A. As a theory we chose to apply translanguaging. Our analytical starting points for this study are text- and multimodal text analysis. The questions, that this study is based upon, are “Do the textbooks express a translanguaging language vision?” and “Do the textbooks include the intended reader?”. Starting with our questions we created indicators to be able to analyze the textbooks. The indicators that we used to expose translanguaging were comparison of language, mother tongue, meta-markers (looks like, reminds of…) and fixed phrases. The indicators that were used to expose inclusion were; prior knowledge that is assumed, if minorities are noticed -in what way?, how the reader is addressed and level of difficulty in the language. The study showed that the level of prior knowledge needed to be able to use the textbooks set the textbooks apart. It also showed that neither one of the textbooks used the mother tongue as a resource for future learning. We could also see how the usage of pictures differed between the textbooks. Both textbooks, somewhat, used the pictures to support the text, but to a different extent. In conclusion the study shows that the textbook Språkis – svenska för nyfikna C, uses translanguaging and inclusion to a greater extent than Entré elevbok A does.