Browsing by Author "Lindborg, Netta"

This study is a systematic review which aims to investigate the practice of code-switching among pupils with an immigrant background. This study also examines teaching arrangements and the level of knowledge in mother tongue’s relation to second language learning. The purpose of this study is to get information about the situations where immigrant pupils feel the need to use their mother tongue and how strongly does the level of knowledge in mother tongue affects second language learning. According to the earlier studies the knowledge in mother tongue has a remarkable impact on second language learning. Also one’s mother tongue has an important meaning in developing identity. That makes teaching and learning mother tongues very important. The ongoing increase of the number of immigrants makes this topic current not only for the professional teachers but also for the whole society. This study has been made using systematic review as a method. The study material consisted of six studies that were doctoral dissertations and research articles. Four of the studies were Finnish and two of them were foreign. The study material was collected from university databases and Google Scholar. Pupils in this study used code-switching when they wanted to express their feelings and opinions. The pupils were found to switch codes for showing personal attitude, clarifying grammatical structures or vocabulary items and maintaining flow of communication. These results are very similar to the earlier study results. The link between the knowledge in mother tongue and learning second language were also quite distinguishable in the results. According to this study it seems that a certain level of knowledge in mother tongue is a requirement for learning another language. The connection between teaching arrangements and second language learning were harder to interpret. Also the results show that bilingual learning environment is beneficial for child’s learning process.