This article sets out to explore English as foreign language (EFL) teachers’views of teaching migrant pupils with multilingual backgrounds in a regularclassroom. Previous studies on multilingual pupils have mostly concentratedon second language learning contexts or on the role of pupils’ L1. In an increasinglymultilingual world and due to growing migration, this study concentrateson EFL. The data were interviews with English teachers (n=7), who reflected ontheir experiences with migrant pupils in the foreign language classroom. The datawere analysed through qualitative content analysis. The participants had notreally pondered on the role of multilingualism in the EFL classroom and someunderlying preconceptions could be detected. Teachers’ perception of the multilingualpupil was controversial in that they did not want to draw attention to thelinguistic background of the pupil but, on the other hand, they had noticed thatmultilingual learners had greater language awareness than their mainstreampeers. Although not fully aware of the potential of multilingualism and the pupils’linguistic resources in EFL teaching, the teachers had used several ways of supportingtheir multilingual learners, reflecting the principles of translanguaging.</p
