Andrespråksdidaktisk praksis og læreroppfatninger om andrespråksinnlæring

Abstract

This thesis is written within the field of Norwegian as a second language. The main focus is on the teacher as a factor in second language acquisition. The thesis question is as follows: What characterizes teachers’ language didactic practice and their perceptions about second language acquisition? The informant group in the survey consists of four teachers, from one school for children recently arrived from foreign countries (reception school) and two regular schools respectively, in one of the Agder counties. The teachers work at year 5-7 and have different amounts of experience working with students with Norwegian as a second language. The project is based on a method combination of observation and interview. The observation consists of three separate lessons, with the aim to get an impression of the teachers’ second language didactical practice. The interviews consist of conversations with the four teachers, where the objective is to examine the teachers’ perceptions about second language acquisition. The teachers in the project work out of different subject curriculums. While the teachers from the reception school only use the “Curriculum for Basic Norwegian for language minorities” (GNO), the teachers at the regular schools use both GNO and the regular subject curriculum in Norwegian (NO). As a prerequisite, the two different subject curriculums will be compared with focus on what they value in second language acquisition, especially in regards to perspective. This is done to see whether if the teachers have a different basis for their teaching practice and if their perceptions about second language acquisition could have been colored by the respective subject curriculums. Through the thesis research, it is clear that a social and cognitive perspective on teaching heavily influences the subject curriculums (GNO and NO), where the focus in GNO lies with words and concept acquisition, while the focus in NO is to adequately communicate with each other. This can, to a certain extent, give the teachers different basis for practice and perception. The teachers’ language didactic practice is influenced by a social and cognitive teaching perspective, but also more individual approaches. The observations focus on concepts. The teachers’ perceptions can be recognized by a social and cognitive perspective on teaching. However, a part of it can also be seen as generative, and an even smaller part behavioristic. The teachers are concerned with the language components’ content and use in language acquisition and believe that oral skills are crucial for later life. The teachers believe that experience from the classroom and perceptions have equal influence, and they have their own understanding of how important of a role the teacher has in second language acquisition, ranging from very crucial to less crucial.