Language proficiency before school entry has proven to be a powerful predictor of literacy development. This longitudinal study examined how simultaneous exposure to two richly inflected languages from birth contributes to the development of language-related literacy precursors at preschool age compared to peers exposed to one language. The community language turned out to be the stronger language of the bilinguals by 4 years of age and to a great extent ageappropriate compared to monolingual peers. The same initial exposure conditions resulted in three bilingual and two monolingual language proficiency profiles. For the bilinguals changes in the proportion of exposure to two home languages and frequency of language-specific social interactions explained proficiency in each language, whereas for the monolinguals exposure did not explain language proficiency. Our findings give support for the primary impact of exposure on the development of bilingualism and preliteracy skills.

Sweden is one of the countries hosting the largest number of refugees and other categories of immigrants. In recent decades, the Swedish school system has been entered by a sizeable group of children who are at the same time learning a new language and acquiring new knowledge and skills in this language. The ongoing migration forces the Swedish education system to respond to the challenges associated with the need to integrate as soon as possible a fairly large group of students who do not speak Swedish and study at a Swedish school. The immigrant students in Sweden are a rather heterogeneous group with different levels of training, experience and needs. The Swedish National Agency for Education believes that it is necessary to improve the conditions for the integration of newly arrived students in the Swedish school system by better defining their needs. Since January 2016 an obligatory pedagogical mapping both of the newly arrived students’ language skills and of their knowledge in different school subjects has been introduced by the Swedish National Agency for Education. To this end, materials have been developed for mapping the experience, knowledge and skills of newly arrived students both in the field of language proficiency and in individual school subjects. The mapping should take place during the first two months of a student’s learning, and the result should be a profile of knowledge and skills that will be used to determine the students’ place in the Swedish school system and plan their further education. The article presents the approaches and methods used during this mapping, as well as the dual role of the mother tongue teacher as both a subject teacher and as a mediator between the school, the student and the family during the integration process.

The article discusses the pedagogy of Translanguaging - a new direction of work with multilingual students at schools in Western Europe and America. The purpose of this article is to introduce the reader into the peculiarities of working in multilingual classes within the framework of translingual pedagogy. The increased migration flows of recent years have extremely aggravated the problem of teaching migrant children at school. The pedagogy of translingualism allows us to systematically rely on the capabilities of the native language of students. With this approach, the background knowledge of multilingual students is activated, and the awareness of their identity positively affects both school activities and the development of cognitive abilities of all students studying in multilingual classes. Teaching multilingual students in the classroom requires a specially thought-out and worked-out methodology. This article discusses the application of methods of translingual pedagogy when working with vocabulary, morphology and syntax, in teaching reading and writing, as well as in group project work. The article is based on the study of scientific literature on the pedagogy of translingualism, observation of the work of teachers in multilingual classes in Sollentuna (Sweden), as well as on the examples of personal experience of working with Russian-speaking students in multilingual classes. The article provides several examples of how the use of translingual practices allows all students, regardless of their proficiency in the language of instruction, to express, explain and discuss their ideas, work on projects, create written texts and audiovisual presentations. The main emphasis is placed on group work, for the success of which both the teacher and the members of the study group must accept the fact that a multilingual student should be given the opportunity to use all their language resources to acquire new knowledge and skills. The role of the teacher in this case is to organize and direct this process so that it brings maximum benefit to all students.