The present study investigated whether the teaching of L2 vocabulary with still cartoon pictures and animated cartoon pictures would result in a significant difference in second language learners' receptive and productive knowledge of the target words. Also, the effect of test type (receptive vs. productive) on participants' retention of the target words was examined. Finally, the study tried to find out whether the semantic category of vocabulary words influences the rate of successful vocabulary retention across picture types. For the purpose, a group of 17 ESL students from a Midwestern University participated in both treatments with still and animated pictures, followed by vocabulary tests. The results showed that over 80% of the target words were successfully retrieved on the receptive knowledge tests vs. only about 40% successful retrieval on the productive knowledge tests. Yet, the results did not reveal significant differences in vocabulary gain due to picture type as both treatments showed similar success rate of retention of the target words, especially in view of receptive knowledge. Also, neither of the two types of pictures was effective in facilitating productive knowledge of the target words. In addition, the study found that some semantic categories of vocabulary words may be easier to recall than others.

This thesis is a qualitative text analysis of worksheets used in conjunction with watching films in English language studies in Swedish middle schools. The assignments used in the thesis were partly collected from partner schools in the teacher program and partly collected from a website which is a database of teacher submitted lesson plans. The results of the thesis include a presentation and discussion of different worksheets used by teachers, using a structure based on one used for critical discourse analysis instruction with students. The evidence suggests that two factors gave an increase in explicitly named aspects of critical literacy in film studies: firstly, that the assignment be situated in a program of study within the Swedish curriculum which shares many of the goals of critical literacy studies and secondly that the choice of film is one that challenges students to reconsider their experiences in light of the film. This study also raises the concern that the questioning methods used to implement critical literacy studies are being used to increase student talk for the purposes of grading oral proficiency without interactive discussions.

The purpose of this literature review is to compare some critical reading comprehension classroom practices globally, with particular focus on the teaching of reading comprehension in Sweden, where student well being and equity are issues of importance. Critical literacy used is a term that encompasses many aspects of power related issues in language. The Swedish curriculum is explicit in naming these issues of student identity and democratic agency which it shares with critical pedagogical practices. The result of the review is a presentation and discussion of the different studies, using a structure based on one used for critical discourse analysis instruction with students. The evidence suggests that higher level comprehension is a skill that takes time to train and should be done explicitly by pointing out the aspects of language which convey meaning. Learning to search the text for evidence of the underlying meaning gave verystrong effect sizes on standardized tests for reading comprehension. The reading comprehension results of minority/ESL students on standardized tests improved when space was made to discuss very different experiences within the same culture in language classrooms.

The purpose of this essay is to find out how upper secondary English teachers should work in order to reach the weaker students. I am interested in what has been written about mixed-ability classes, the challenges they present and most of all how teachers of English need to work in such classes to reach all students, especially the weaker ones. I have also interviewed three upper secondary teachers about how they work to reach the weaker students in their classes. My findings are that, according to the teachers interviewed, the best way to deal with the problem is to bring back ability grouping. The literature I read mostly had negative views on this method and stressed the importance of differentiation and motivation instead. Both the literature and the teachers claimed that a good atmosphere, clear instructions, structure and setting routines were the most important factors when working with mixed ability classes.

From the 1960s to the present, the Swedish school has undergone quite a few major reforms, including three new national curricula. The aim of this literature review is to investigate what previous research says about curriculum reform regarding second language teaching and learning in general, and English as a second language in particular. Through analysis of the chosen seven sources, there is some evidence that curriculum reform has affected second language learning and teaching. Especially when it comes to the implementation of curriculum, a subject syllabus plays an essential role in the process of transmitting knowledge, and the dynamic of the classroom is changing, which entails that both teachers’ role and students’ roles are shifting. The teacher is not the only source of knowledge any more, and students do not just sit in the classroom and listen to the teacher. Students’ influence is highlighted both in the curriculum and in the classroom. Communicative competence has become the focus of the teaching and learning of a second language.

Playing video games is an activity that takes up an increasing amount of children’s and adolescent’s spare time. While some previous studies have highlighted the negative aspects of video games, little research has been carried out on the linguistic learning opportunities that video games present. This study primarily investigates if Swedish second language learners of English can increase their vocabulary proficiency in English with the use of video games. In order to answer the research questions, two quantitative data elicitation methods are used: a questionnaire which aims to gather attitudinal and behavioral data, and a Vocabulary Levels Test which elicits data about the participants’ receptive vocabulary proficiency. The participants consist of 25 students at an upper secondary school in Stockholm. The results show that participants who played video games scored higher on the Vocabulary Levels Test, indicating a higher receptive vocabulary proficiency. Furthermore, the results show that participants who played moderate to frequent amounts of time performed better in the Vocabulary Levels Test than infrequent players. The results also show that video games emphasizing co-operation and communication are preferable to use for vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, the study discusses if video games could be integrated into the Swedish upper secondary school system.

INTRODUCTION. The Central Institute for the Deaf published Auditory Tests W-1 (CID W-1) spondaic wordlist was developed in the USA in 1947 and 1952. Certain American-English words contained in the wordlist are unfamiliar to many South Africans, even English first language (EFL) speakers, but particularly those who use English as a second language (ESL). Familiarity with spondaic words is one of the most important qualities of the test items used to determine Speech Recognition Threshold (SRT). OBJECTIVES. The aim of this study was to compare the SRT results obtained with the English South African Spondaic (SAS) wordlist developed by Durrant (2006) and the English CID W-1 spondaic wordlist when measuring the SRT of adult ESL speakers in South Africa. Method. Audiometric Pure Tone Average (PTA) and SRT measurements were obtained for 101 (197 ears) ESL participants with normal hearing or a minimal hearing loss <26 dBHL (mean age 33.3). PTA/SRT correlations were compared when using the SAS wordlist (groups one and two), as well as either the ‘less familiar’ CID W-1 (group one) or ‘more familiar’ CID W-1 (group two), in a mixed matched group design. RESULTS. A Pearson correlation analysis revealed a significant and positive correlation for all three wordlists. The Pearson correlation analysis revealed a strong PTA/SRT correlation when using the South African Spondaic (SAS) wordlist (right ear: 0.65; left ear 0.58) and the ‘more familiar’ words from the CID W-1 wordlist (right ear: 0.63; left ear: 0.56). The use of the ‘less familiar’ words from the CID W-1 wordlist revealed weak correlations (right ear: 0.30; left ear: 0.32). Paired sample T-tests indicated a statistically significantly stronger PTA/SRT correlation when the SAS wordlist was used, rather than either of the CID W-1 wordlists, at a 95% level of confidence. CONCLUSIONS. The use of the SAS wordlist yields a stronger PTA/SRT correlation than the use of the CID W-1 wordlist, when performing SRT testing as part of the speech audiometry battery on South African ESL speakers with normal hearing, or minimal hearing loss <26 dBHL. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / MA / Unrestricted

A recent (2016) PISA survey has shown that, among Swedish youth, one in five students do not reach a basic level of reading literacy, a result mirrored that of a similar study from 2009, which suggests that Swedish schools and teachers have failed to address this issue successfully over a longer period of time. This raised the question of why this is and what possible measures could be taken to improve the situation. This study aimed to explore the topic of reading literacy in the ESL classroom. In particular it aimed to specifically research how teachers at a local school in southern Sweden individualise reading activities by assessing existing levels of reading literacy. This was achieved through semi-structured interviews with experienced teachers currently employed at the school who were asked whether or not they assess previous knowledge or skills and, if so, how. When challenged with a negative result, that is, no explicit strategies were discovered, the study took the form of a hermeneutic process in which new questions continuously arose and were explored regarding the subject of reading literacy. The guiding documents for Swedish upper secondary school were studied in order to clarify their approach toreading literacy and the assessment thereof. The conclusion of the study initially discusses the way in which the hermeneutic process has changed and challenged our perception of the topic of assessing reading literacy. Lastly, areas of improvement, and suggestions for future research on the subject, are discussed.

Les applications de traitement d'image et vidéo sont caractérisées par le traitement d'une grande quantité de données. La conception de ces applications complexes avec des méthodologies de conception traditionnelles bas niveau provoque 1'augmentation des coûts de développement. Afin de résoudre ces défis, des outils de synthèse haut niveau ont été proposés. Le principe de base est de modéliser le comportement de l'ensemble du système en utilisant des spécifications haut niveau afin de permettre la synthèse automatique vers des spécifications bas niveau pour implémentation efficace en FPGA. Cependant, l'inconvénient principal de ces outils de synthèse haut niveau est le manque de prise en compte de la totalité du système, c.-à-d. la création de la communication entre les différents composants pour atteindre le niveau système n'est pas considérée. Le but de cette thèse est d'élever le niveau d'abstraction dans la conception des systèmes embarqués au niveau système. Nous proposons un flot de conception qui permet une synthèse matérielle efficace des applications de traitement vidéo décrites en utilisant un langage spécifique à un domaine pour la programmation flot-de- données. Le flot de conception combine un compilateur flot- de-données pour générer des descriptions à base de code C et d'un synthétiseur pour générer des descriptions niveau de transfert de registre. Le défi majeur de l'implémentation en FPGA des canaux de communication des programmes flot-de-données basés sur un modèle de calcul est la minimisation des frais généraux de la communication. Pour cela, nous avons introduit une nouvelle approche de synthèse de l'interface qui mappe les grandes quantités des données vidéo, à travers des m'mémoires partagées sur FPGA. Ce qui conduit à une diminution considérable de la latence et une augmentation du débit. Ces résultats ont été démontrés sur la synthèse matérielle du standard vidéo émergent High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). / Image and video processing applications are characterized by the processing of a huge amount of data. The design of such complex applications with traditional design methodologies at lowlevel of abstraction causes increasing development costs. In order to resolve the above mentioned challenges, Electronic System Level (ESL) synthesis or High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools were proposed. The basic premise is to model the behavior of the entire system using high level specifications, and to enable the automatic synthesis to low-level specifications for efficient implementation in Field-Programmable Gate array (FPGA). However, the main downside of the HLS tools is the lack of the entire system consideration, i.e. the establishment of the communications between these components to achieve the system-level is not yet considered. The purpose of this thesis is to raise the level of abstraction in the design of embedded systems to the system-level. A novel design flow was proposed that enables an efficient hardware implementation of video processing applications described using a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for dataflow programming. The design flow combines a dataflow compiler for generating C-based HLS descriptions from a dataflow description and a C-to-gate synthesizer for generating Register-Transfer Level (RTL) descriptions. The challenge of implementing the communication channels of dataflow programs relying on Model of Computation (MoC) in FPGA is the minimization of the communication overhead. In this issue, we introduced a new interface synthesis approach that maps the large amounts of data that multimedia and image processing applications process, to shared memories on the FPGA. This leads to a tremendous decrease in the latency and an increase in the throughput. These results were demonstrated upon the hardware synthesis of the emerging High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.

Research to date on the native versus non-native English speaker teacher (NEST versus non-NEST) debate has primarily focused on teacher self-perception and performance. A neglected, but essential, viewpoint on this issue comes from English as a second language (ESL) students themselves. This study investigated preferences of adults, specifically immigrant and refugee learners, for NESTs or non-NESTs. A 34-item, 5-point Likert attitudinal survey was given to 102 students (52 immigrants, 50 refugees) enrolled in ESL programs in a large metropolitan area in Texas . After responding to the survey, 32 students volunteered for group interviews to further explain their preferences. Results indicated that adult ESL students have a general preference for NESTs over non-NESTs, but have stronger preferences for NESTs in teaching specific skill areas such as pronunciation and writing. There was not a significant difference between immigrants' and refugees' general preferences for NESTs over non-NESTs based on immigration status.