Abstract:

Learning a foreign language is compulsory at Latvian schools. The English language is the first foreign language in this respect and is mainly taught since the 1st form. Upon completion of the secondary education, all students should master the English language at a certain level. This background may be further used in various directions. One of such ways is to use grammar structures, phonetics or vocabulary systems of the first foreign language (English) in teaching the second foreign language (Swedish in our case). In this paper, we aim to analyse the application of the English language as lingua franca, a means of intercommunication, in a class where students’ mother tongue is other than English but whose command of English is good enough to be used when acquiring new information or knowledge. Such an application of English may by all means have both benefits and drawbacks and have either supporters or opponents, which is going to be discussed in this paper.

The authors will discuss bilingualism/multilingualism in the learning process (Breidbach 2003; Bernhard et al. 2005) and the problems associated with it as this is a topical issue in Latvian schools/higher education institutions. Our hypothesis is that the use of English as a mediator in delivering certain knowledge when teaching Swedish to a non-English speaker having a good command of English may indeed facilitate the learning process. In order to prove or reject the hypothesis, the study of theoretical literature on the issue of bilingualism, multilingualism, plurilingualism have been carried out with the aim of revealing how the efficient language classes may be organised in such circumstances and the survey of students whose mother tongue is other than English and who learn Swedish either at the university as the second foreign language or in the evening courses has been carried out in order to identify the role of English in this process. The authors will analyse the student survey concerning the usefulness of the English language in learning Swedish and propose their vision on hoe English can be used in this respect, what areas of teaching Swedish may be facilitated using English as a lingua franca.

Keywords:

English, Swedish, teaching, learning, foreign language, lingua franca, bilingualism.