Grammatikens plats och funktion i sva-undervisningen

In the present study, four teachers’ views on grammar instruction for newly arrived adolescents are explored through semi-structured interviews focusing on the subject Swedish as a second language, and the varied ways in which the teachers include grammar in their teaching. The topics that emerge through the interviews are extracted through ethnographic analysis, in which the researchers move from a bottom-up to a top-down approach where themes are continuously reorganised and reified in the light of previous research. The views of the teachers are then summarised in four teacher profiles, using Ivanič’s (2004) discourses of writing in relation to the teaching of grammar. Results indicate that a central question for all teachers is the relationship between explicit grammar instruction, on the one hand, and explicit and implicit knowledge of grammar, on the other. Three of four teachers are hesitant about whether explicit grammar instruction can lead to intuitive, automatized knowledge of grammar. In this way, the usefulness of explicit grammar instruction for this group is questioned, in particular the type referred to as ‘contextless grammar instruction’. The aim of grammar instruction then, whether it is implicit or explicit, is that the grammatical knowledge should be readily accessible to the pupils.