The benefits of reading fiction for literacy development in second language acquisition has long been discussed (Krashen, 2004; Paran, 2008) and so has bilingual reading within literacy programs (Ramirez, 2020). However, little research has been done within the area of bilingual fiction reading for adult learners (Lindholm, Risenfors & von Brömssen, 2024).

This bilingual fiction reading project focused on LESLLA-learners in adult education, Swedish For Immigrants, in two educational contexts with different terms. The aim was to explore whether bilingual fiction reading would enhance the learners’ SLA as well as their literacy. The comparison between the two educational contexts highlights: 1) the importance of resources, such as school library and mother tongue instructors, 2) a cooperation with different professionals involved: working together against the goal of literacy of the learners, 3) the differences between municipalities The School Inspectorate (2024) reported on, hence in the other school context, it is obvious how teachers and learners, however happy with the reading method, struggle with challenges partly due to lack of such resources.

Among early results was code breaking (Luke & Freebody, 1999) as well as further literacy practices development in the mother tongue by former illiterate learners from Somalia, having learned the alphabet in Swedish, transforming the knowledge into their mother tongue, thus developing biliteracy (Hornberger, 2003). Hence the learners now can use strategies such as code switching (Cummins, 2017) more efficiently in a translanguaging and experience based (Garcia, 2017) learning practice, I argue, this will benefit their second language acquisition as well as their literacy development in Swedish. The exploring of the method further developed the teachers’ pedagogy as well as their cooperation with the mother tongue instructors. Thus, the project developed their communities of practices (Lave, 1991; Kemmis et al. 2013).