Den språkliga aspekten av ‘word problems’ för elever med annat modersmål än undervisningsspråket

Sammanfattning: Word problems are something all students have to conquer to earn a passing grade. In this essay we examine the effect word problems have on students who speak a different first language than the language of instructions. The purpose of this study is to get a better understanding of why students with a different first language score lower on tests. A few different articles have been chosen to further study this topic. Some of these studies claim that word problems are more difficult for students with a different first language than the language of instructions. Other studies claim it does not affect their performance and the disparity of the results between students are due to socioeconomic factors. All of the articles do see a boost in performance when the teacher focuses more on language but not all of the scientists agree that it is due to a language barrier.