Interaction and meaning making in basic adult education for immigrants the case of Swedish for immigrants in Sweden (SFI)

Abstract

In this article, focus is on students’ oral production in two classrooms in Swedish for immigrants (SFI). The study focuses on practices with interaction patterns where students are involved in negotiation of meaning. Theoretical basis is the importance of interpersonal interaction for language development, with a focus on students’ use of varied speaker roles and speech actions. Data were obtained through observations, field notes, and audio and video recordings. The examples presented here demonstrate that students were involved in the negotiation of meaning and had space to try different speaker roles and speech actions, such as (among others) initiating, agreeing, dissenting, arguing, interrupting, and taking the floor. These examples only constituted a restricted part of class time, and most of the teaching was of a type where little oral or written interaction took place. Overall, we think that SFI education could be improved by developing teaching that stimulates and allows for negotiations of meaning and language production and also allows for use of different types of digital media, both for oral and written interaction.