Jag skriva bokstäver, bara bokstäver! : En vetenskaplig essä om barns språkutveckling

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this scientific essay is to explore the different approaches to language development for multilingual children in preschool practice. The essay is about a four-year-old girl who did not master the Swedish language so well when she started preschool. All the other children in the group had Swedish as a mother tongue, while two of them were bilingual. We preschool teachers found ourselves in a dilemma as we did not know how to approach the development of a multilingual child’s language skills while at the same time continuing the pedagogical work with the rest of the group. Consequently, the following two research questions emerged, and I have tried to answer them by using different theoretical perspectives. Firstly, I asked myself: “What opportunities for language development do we give a multilingual child in play and group situations like circle-time and what impact has it on the other children in the group?” The second question I raised was:” What significance has the preschool teacher’s approach in meeting the children’s different needs for language development?” I have used essay-writing as my research method of exploring these two questions. A method through which, by reflecting and problematizing, I could look at my dilemma from several different perspectives. In my essay, I have used a socio-cultural perspective, according to which learning occurs in the interaction with others. In addition, I applied concepts such as multilingualism, interculturality, literacy and language development. The result of this study has highlighted the importance of focusing on the needs of each individual child while at the same time attending to the needs of the group as a whole. In conclusion, being an attentive preschool teacher as well as the way we meet and respond to children is of utmost importance when working in a preschool environment.