Resent research has shown that there are strong connections between knowledge devel-opment and language development and that this should not be separated in teaching. Despite this there is a tradition, hard to kill, in Swedish Primary schools to teach lan-guage separated from content. Furthermore, language development has been associated with the formal aspects of how to read and write both in educational and political discourse. This has earlier been regarded as a matter for Swedish teachers only.Over the last few years, Swedish teacher education has been criticised for not acknowl-edging what recent research has shown, namely the importance of content-based and functional reading and writing, irrespective of what subject the student has chosen. In recognition of these findings, changes have been carried out in the syllabi for all subjects in teacher education at Malmö University. The basic idea is to make students aware that children develop their language if in school they are given the opportunity to examine their living conditions and the world that they live in.