Fostering Plurilingual Competence in Norwegian Lower Secondary Schools: Cross-linguistic Awareness in Bilingual Language Support Classes

Abstract

This article investigates the use of the home language in bilingual subject instruction in Norwegian lower secondary schools and its role in raising cross-linguistic awareness and strengthening students’ plurilingual competence. Being a transitional language support offer, bilingual subject instruction has the potential to equip students with competences needed in mainstream schooling, as well as prepare them to use their holistic linguistic repertoires according to changing circumstances and needs. The study follows a qualitative research design and introduces spoken data from three classroom contexts. The analysis features dyadic interactions between one bilingual Polish teacher and three lower secondary students with Polish heritage, recorded during individual bilingual subject instruction classes. The findings show that the teacher uses an array of practices to uncover tacit linguistic knowledge and create new links between the language systems. Simultaneously, the home language plays a crucial role in metalinguistic activity and provides the students with a base for subject knowledge and understanding. The study contributes to the field of multilingual education by highlighting the bilingual teacher’s practices that lead to metalinguistic reflection and equip students with plurilingual competence.