Native Students in Foreign Language Learning

Students in Beginners Swedish asked for more small group tutorial classes for more oral practice with a native speaker. UoA has an Erasmus collaboration with Swedish universities, as well as a fair number of Swedish nationals studying a degree programme at Aberdeen. I thought it would be interesting for the native students to meet with learners of Swedish, which would also meet the needs of course students for more supervised oral practice.

I invited Swedish Erasmus students and some Swedish regular students to five organized discussion classes in SN2003 and SN2503. In small groups, each with a native speaker, students discussed various topics or did other activities. I have done this for two years.

I want my students to be able to interact normally in the language they are learning. Interacting with same-age, same-situation peers is a different experience from talking to the teacher.

This teaching method is currently being evaluated with surveys to and interviews with this year's native and course students. So far, 100% of all respondents enjoyed the classes. 100% of native and at least 78% of responding course students would have wanted more out-of-class activities together. For 7 of 8 native students it added to their experience of studying abroad. 100% of course students report increased confidence in speaking, increased ability to understand spoken Swedish and that they learnt something new from the discussion classes about Swedish language, dialects, culture and people.