Abstract 

Pupils with a mother tongue other than Swedish perform worse in mathematics than their peers with Swedish as their first language. The purpose of the study is to investigate the importance of language in mathematics teaching. Inadequate knowledge of the language affects students' ability to solve mathematical problems which involve texts. More specifically, the purpose of the study to find out and demonstrate how difficult it is for pupils with Swedish as a second language to solve mathematical problems involving texts compared to students with Swedish as their first language. Furthermore, the purpose i nvolves enhancing the importance of language skills in mathematics teaching. In order to carry out the study I have chosen to interview a number of teachers with various years of experience. Results show how important language skills are in mathematics teaching and also that it is important to talk about mathematics with second language students, which is consistent with previous research that I have read and referenced. Since my study is so limited in terms of the number of interviews, I want to emphasise that the results of my investigation represent an indication. Mother tongue education is important for second language students because their first language acts as a bridge to the new language. In mother tongue teaching, students have the opportunity to develop their mathematics skills in their first language while they learn the Swedish language.Keywords:Learning, language, mathematic, mathematical problems involving texts, mother tongue, Swedish as a second language, task, teaching