Foreign Language Teaching in Sweden: a long tradition

The newly implemented teaching programme for comprehensive schools reinforces language teaching by making the learning of a second foreign language compulsory, by increasing language class hours and by introducing Spanish on an equal footing with German and French. These measures are in keeping with Sweden's long tradition of language teaching, which has always held a place of honour in the Swedish school curriculum. This article sets out to describe the evolution and organisation of foreign language teaching as well as the status and image related to the languages that are taught. When the Swedish right‐wing coalition government came into office in autumn 1991, one of its spokesmen, the Minister of Education, pointed out the necessity of reinforcing language teaching in the school context. This materialised with the introduction of a new teaching programme in 1994, which made compulsory the learning of a second foreign language. English had already been made compulsory for all pupils in 1962 when the grundskola was created to cover nine school years in a unique framework. Language teaching therefore holds a place of honour in the Swedish school curriculum. And one is entitled to wonder if this choice made by the Swedish school authorities is a recent phenomenon.