In Brazil, English is studied from first grade of elementary school. For some reason after eleven years of study, students in general have problems communicating orally and in writing. Swedish students, on the other hand, seem to be able to communicate quite proficiently in English, even though it is also considered to be foreign language learning. The purpose of this comparative study is to discover what differs in the Brazilian and Swedish learning and teaching that makes the Swedish results superior. The purpose was to compare English learning as a foreign language in Sweden and in Brazil, and questionnaires were distributed to teacher and students. Of the many possibilities raised as hypotheses for the effective English learning in Sweden, teacher’s educational background, working hours per week, number of students per teacher, were found to be more problematic in Brazil, according to the teachers’ questionnaire. When it comes to students, it appears that Brazilian students show a lack of commitment to their learning tasks and awareness of the importance of learning English. In addition, several social aspects have to be taken into account when judging the educational situation of a country, but the importance of a good education can never be overlooked.

The importance of extensive literature reading in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context has been given increasing attention in recent research. Literature reading is also a required part of the national syllabi of the (EFL) courses offered to both adolescents and adults at Upper Secondary level in Sweden. This thesis aims to investigate the teachers’ process of making literature choices for extensive reading in upper secondary EFL courses in Sweden. Eight teachers of three different student groups took part in the study, representing adolescent university preparatory programs and vocational programs, as well as programs for adult students. Questionnaires were used and the data was analyzed for patterns revealing three main factors affecting teachers’ literature choice: language proficiency, reading experience and contextual factors. These three factors were fitted into the theoretical framework of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic reading models, with the addition of a perspective of motivational research. The results of this survey underline the importance of extensive reading, according to teachers, and that motivation for literature choice can be primarily related to factors associated with psycholinguistic reading models. The survey also points to the need for further investigating of teachers’ own experiences of literature reading, searching for deeper motivational factors which influence teaching choices. Another future field of research is the choice of reading activities assigned together with the chosen literature, which probably also influence teachers’ choices in the Swedish EFL classroom.

For this study, two groups of native Icelandic speakers were compared in terms of the acoustic properties of their English pronunciation of two phonetic phenomena, plosives and pre-aspiration. In English, plosives with the same manner and place of articulation are distinguished by means of a voicing contrast, whereas in Icelandic, plosives are distinguished by means of an aspiration contrast. This study examines whether participants exhibit interlanguage features in their plosive contrasts in English, substituting unaspirated voiceless plosives for voiced counterparts. Furthermore, this study looks at pre-aspiration, a phonetic feature of Icelandic, characterized by glottal friction following a short vowel preceding a fortis plosive (VhC). Pre-aspiration is not a feature of standard English varieties such as general American (GA) or received pronunciation (RP), and as such this study examines whether participants retain pre-aspiration in their English pronunciation or not. Participants numbered 16 in total, and were all L1 speakers of Icelandic, with eight in each group, four male and four female. The groups were divided by means of age differences, with the first group consisting of participants aged 20-26, and the second group of participants aged 44-50. Participants were asked to partake in a short informal interview, to read a short written passage, and to read a word list. The interview and readings were recorded and analysed using spectrograms and waveforms, and subsequently compared with English and Icelandic reference values for voice onset time (VOT), which vary between the two languages, and pre-aspiration duration in Icelandic. The two groups were also compared to determine whether there were any lingering differences between them. The conclusions drawn are that VOT in English and Icelandic may be more similar than assumed, and that participants shorten pre-aspiration duration or neutralize pre-aspiration when speaking English. However, the English production of the features are more similar to Icelandic than English. Furthermore, the results do not indicate any differences between the two age groups in terms of English pronunciation.

The aim of this study is to examine to what extent Swedish writers, who write in English, use the modals must, have to and have got to. The hypothesis being tested argues that the core modal must is not being challenged by the emerging modals have to and have got to in this non-native variety of English. The objective of this thesis is to be accomplished by attempting to answer the following research questions: 1) What is the frequency and usage of the English modals must, have to and have got to in the material? 2) How do the frequencies in the Swedish material compare with the frequencies in the British and American corpora and to the previous studies? 3) How do the Swedish writers use the modals with regard to epistemic and deontic meaning? The study is corpus based, and the corpora used consist of Swedish newspapers in English (SWENC) and material from blogs and tweets which are written in English by Swedes (SESMC). These are compared with the press sub-corpora in BE06 (the British 2006 corpus of CQP web at Lancaster) and in AE06 (the American 2006 corpus of CQP web at Lancaster), which represent British and American native varieties of English. The method is quantitative and the results are presented after the process of normalization. The results show that must, have to and have got to are used in SWENC and SESMC although, to greatly varying degrees. The core modal must is more frequently used in the Swedish corpus than in the British and American sub-corpora. The emerging modal have to is used more frequently than must in all three corpora. The second emerging modal have got to is very seldomly used. Additionally, a qualitative examination of the modals and their meanings reveal that the writers in SWENC and SESMC use the older modal must alongside the newer have to and newest modal have got to, but with a preference for a toned-down style of language. The conclusion drawn is that the core modal must is indeed being challenged by the emerging modal have to even in the non-native variety of English.

The aim of this study is to discover if Swedish writers use American or British spelling, vocabulary and grammar when writing a text in English. The focus is on differences in spelling categories, lexical variation between the two varieties as well as differences in the usage of non-finite complementation. This is a quantitative study based on material from the Swedish in English Newspapers Corpus (SWENC), the Blogs in English by Swedes Corpus (BESC), and the Corpus of English Tweets by Swedes (CETS). The results show that Swedish writers of English prefer to use British English spelling, American English vocabulary and that they tend to imitate American English grammar usage when it comes to non-finite complementation. The conclusions are that the English of Swedish writers is affected by the standards of the English used in at least two of the countries in the Inner Circle, i.e. American and British English, and that it seems to be influenced both by what is taught in school and what the writers see and hear in the media.

Since 2004 the Colombian Ministry of Education has been implementing the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo (PNB) with the goal of having bilingual high school graduates in English and Spanish by 2019. However, implementation of the PNB has been criticized by English Language Teaching (ELT) specialists in the country who say, among other things, that the PNB introduced a discourse associated exclusively with bilingualism in English and Spanish. This study analyzed interviews with 15 participants of a public school of the Colombian Escuela Nueva, a successful model of community-based education that has begun a process of internationalization, regarding the participants’ perceptions of foreign language education and the policies of the PNB. Six students, five teachers, and four administrators were each interviewed twice using semi-structured interviews. To offer a critique of the PNB, this study tried to determine to what extent the school implemented the elements of Responsible ELT, a model developed by the researcher incorporating the concepts of hegemony of English, critical language-policy research, and resistance in ELT. Findings included the following: (a) students and teachers saw English as the universal language whereas most administrators saw English imposed due to political and economic reasons; (b) some teachers misinterpreted the 1994 General Law of Education mandating the teaching of a foreign language as a law mandating English; and (c) some teachers and administrators saw the PNB’s adoption of competence standards based on the Common European Framework of Reference for languages as beneficial whereas others saw it as arbitrary. Conclusions derived from this study of this Escuela Nueva school were: (a) most participants found the goal of the PNB unrealistic; (b) most teachers and administrators saw the policies of the PNB as top-down policies without assessment or continuity; and (c) teachers and administrators mentioned a disarticulation between elementary and high school ELT policies that may be discouraging students in public schools from learning English. Thus, this study suggests that the policies of the PNB may be contributing to English becoming a gatekeeper for higher education and employment thereby becoming a tool for sustaining inequality in Colombia.

No description available.

This essay investigates the usage of text types in the younger English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom among preschool class and grade 1-3 teachers in Sweden. The essay focuses on identifying what type of texts teachers use, why they use them and how they are used. A combined quantitative and qualitative method was used to collect data. 121 teachers responded to the online-survey that was sent out and a virtual ethnography was conducted by observing two different teaching forums to investigate how teachers use different text types. The findings of the survey showed that the two most commonly used text types are song texts and texts from textbooks. In general, developing the students’ vocabulary was the most common reason why several of the text types were used. Additionally, multiple worksheets which showed how teachers worked with different text types were collected from the virtual ethnography. In this essay, they may be used as inspiration for other teachers who want to expand their use of text types.

The subject of the study was the perceptions of Thai students, in four different teacher education colleges in Thailand, of the study of English as a foreign language. The study had four purposes: To determine the attitudes of the students toward, and their recommendations for, instruction in the study of English? To determine students' perceptions about the importance of learning English; To determine the relationship between the above attitudes and the students' achievement; To analyze the data and conclusions reached and to make appropriate recommendations based on them.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(地球環境学) / 甲第22102号 / 地環博第188号 / 新制||地環||37(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院地球環境学舎地球環境学専攻 / (主査)准教授 SINGER JANE, 教授 佐野 亘, 講師 BAARS ROGER CLOUD / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Global Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM