Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-26T18:49:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao.pdf: 1247555 bytes, checksum: f332f61651d6a03a355f63728b4e93c0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-09-23 / The present research called The Continuing Education of English Teachers through Technologies and Change in Teaching Practice had, as purposes, to investigate the process of continuing education of English teachers through special programs, accomplished through Technologies of Information, offered to teachers in São Paulo State, such as: Interaction Teachers, Interaction Students, A Rede aprende com a Rede, and to analyze the relevance of such courses in the educator s continued formation, in the change of their educational practice and the contribution of such courses in the improvement of English teaching-learning in the state public school, in the elementary and high school. The research was developed under the optics of the qualitative research and it involved the study of thirty five English teachers of the state public school in São Paulo State, belonging to Diretoria de Ensino de Ourinhos, that took part of courses of e-learning modality. To collect data, questionnaires and documental analysis of reports, plans of class and documents from Secretaria da Educação (SEE) were used. The analyses of the data of qualitative and interpretative stamp had as a reference the Analysis of Content, whereas, through this type of analysis, it is possible to accomplish a desirable level of understanding of the perceptions, beliefs and personal relationships of the participants of the research, being considered the context of the courses of continuing education. The analyzed data demonstrated the importance of the continuing education for the change of the teaching practice of English language teaching. / A presente pesquisa, intitulada A Formação Continuada de Professores de Inglês por meio de Tecnologias e a Mudança na Prática Docente , teve como objetivos: investigar o processo de formação continuada de professores de língua inglesa por intermédio de programas especiais, realizados por meio de Tecnologias da Informação, oferecidos a professores da rede estadual de ensino de São Paulo como: Interaction Teachers, Interaction Students, A Rede Aprende com a Rede e analisar a relevância de tais cursos na formação continuada do educador, na mudança de sua prática docente e a contribuição de tais cursos na melhoria do ensino-aprendizagem de inglês na escola pública estadual, no ensino fundamental e médio. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida sob a ótica da pesquisa qualitativa e envolveu o estudo de caso de trinta e cinco professores de inglês da rede pública estadual de ensino do estado de São Paulo, pertencentes à Diretoria de Ensino de Ourinhos, que participaram de cursos de formação continuada na modalidade e.learning. Para levantamento dos dados foram utilizados questionários e análise documental de relatórios, planos de aula, documentos da Secretaria Estadual de Educação (SEE). A análise dos dados, de cunho qualitativo e interpretativo, tiveram como referência a Análise de Conteúdo, visto que, através deste tipo de análise, pode-se alcançar um nível desejável de compreensão das percepções, crenças e relações pessoais dos participantes da pesquisa, considerando-se o contexto dos cursos de formação continuada. Os dados analisados demonstraram a importância da formação continuada para a mudança da prática docente de ensino de língua inglesa.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T17:54:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao.pdf: 1247555 bytes, checksum: f332f61651d6a03a355f63728b4e93c0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-09-23 / The present research called The Continuing Education of English Teachers through Technologies and Change in Teaching Practice had, as purposes, to investigate the process of continuing education of English teachers through special programs, accomplished through Technologies of Information, offered to teachers in São Paulo State, such as: Interaction Teachers, Interaction Students, A Rede aprende com a Rede, and to analyze the relevance of such courses in the educator s continued formation, in the change of their educational practice and the contribution of such courses in the improvement of English teaching-learning in the state public school, in the elementary and high school. The research was developed under the optics of the qualitative research and it involved the study of thirty five English teachers of the state public school in São Paulo State, belonging to Diretoria de Ensino de Ourinhos, that took part of courses of e-learning modality. To collect data, questionnaires and documental analysis of reports, plans of class and documents from Secretaria da Educação (SEE) were used. The analyses of the data of qualitative and interpretative stamp had as a reference the Analysis of Content, whereas, through this type of analysis, it is possible to accomplish a desirable level of understanding of the perceptions, beliefs and personal relationships of the participants of the research, being considered the context of the courses of continuing education. The analyzed data demonstrated the importance of the continuing education for the change of the teaching practice of English language teaching. / A presente pesquisa, intitulada A Formação Continuada de Professores de Inglês por meio de Tecnologias e a Mudança na Prática Docente , teve como objetivos: investigar o processo de formação continuada de professores de língua inglesa por intermédio de programas especiais, realizados por meio de Tecnologias da Informação, oferecidos a professores da rede estadual de ensino de São Paulo como: Interaction Teachers, Interaction Students, A Rede Aprende com a Rede e analisar a relevância de tais cursos na formação continuada do educador, na mudança de sua prática docente e a contribuição de tais cursos na melhoria do ensino-aprendizagem de inglês na escola pública estadual, no ensino fundamental e médio. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida sob a ótica da pesquisa qualitativa e envolveu o estudo de caso de trinta e cinco professores de inglês da rede pública estadual de ensino do estado de São Paulo, pertencentes à Diretoria de Ensino de Ourinhos, que participaram de cursos de formação continuada na modalidade e.learning. Para levantamento dos dados foram utilizados questionários e análise documental de relatórios, planos de aula, documentos da Secretaria Estadual de Educação (SEE). A análise dos dados, de cunho qualitativo e interpretativo, tiveram como referência a Análise de Conteúdo, visto que, através deste tipo de análise, pode-se alcançar um nível desejável de compreensão das percepções, crenças e relações pessoais dos participantes da pesquisa, considerando-se o contexto dos cursos de formação continuada. Os dados analisados demonstraram a importância da formação continuada para a mudança da prática docente de ensino de língua inglesa.

Education in the Swedish school system should aim to assist pupils in the development of fundamental values. This study investigates to what extent different groups of people are represented within two textbooks for English language teaching (ELT), produced in Sweden and commonly used in Swedish schools and how these representations correlate with the values indicated in the curriculum. Additionally, this study explores if textbooks designed for ELT can be adapted and used as a resource in the Arts classroom for multimodal representation analysis. The study used a multimodal critical discourse analysis with a social semiotic approach to address these questions, looking at the textbooks' textual and visual elements. The result is addressed both quantitatively and qualitatively and showed that, while women were shown in active roles, white men were overrepresented in both the visual and textual representations and people of colour of both genders were underrepresented. The results imply that ELT textbooks have some ways to go in order to meet the representation demands that the curriculum sets and that more research needs to address how to more accurately and frequently represent different groups of people within ELT teaching materials.

Digital games are a common interest today and research has shown that digital games affect English vocabulary building in a positive way. This study aims to examine the attitudes of teachers in grade four to six towards the use of digital games for vocabulary building in the classroom and how they are used to do that. There is a lack of research about this subject in a Swedish context which is why this study is important. The study used a mixed method approach where online surveys and interviews were conducted with certified English teachers of grade four to six in Sweden. The attitudes of teachers were found to be generally positive towards using digital games to build vocabulary and the most common use of them is to both practice words and phrases the students already know and to teach new words and phrases. However, insufficient time to prepare digital games for use in the classroom seems to be the biggest challenge teachers face when implementing them. The potential digital games have for enhancing vocabulary building and motivating students is why this study is relevant.

Whether there is a place for L1 use in the EFL classroom or not is a debated topic. Lately, a slight shift from an English-only approach toward a more accepting attitude toward L1 use can be seen. Additionally, teaching should “as far as possible” be conducted in English, according to the National Agency of Education, Skolverket (2011, p. 53). Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate upper secondary students’ and teachers’ attitudes toward L1 use in the EFL classroom in a Swedish context. Moreover, this study will aim to examine any potential connections between attitudes and societal and motivational factors. Via online questionnaires distributed to schools in Gävleborg county, 373 students and 15 teachers participated in the study. The findings in this study confirm the findings from the majority of previous attitudinal studies; there is a general consensus of a positive attitude toward L1 use among the students and teachers, but English should still be the main language used. Instead, a judicious use of L1 as a tool to facilitate comprehension is suggested. Finally, some factors such as motivation and L1 appear to affect the students’ and teachers’ preferences regarding L1 use in the EFL classroom as well.

The possible benefits of digital games for English language learning and teaching have received increasing attention in recent years as more research shows that digital games can affect students’ learning and motivation within formal education. A great deal of the integration of digital games in school contexts depends on the attitude of teachers and students. The aim of this study is to investigate upper-secondary teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward digital games in the English language classroom in a Swedish context. Additionally, this study will also examine teachers’ and students’ views regarding the effects of using digital games for learning English. This is a mixed-method study, where semi-structured interviews and online surveys were conducted by participants from Uppsala, Gävleborg and Dalarna. 106 students and 11 teachers responded to the online survey, and 3 teachers participated in the semi-structured interview. The results found in this study confirm the findings from the majority of previous studies. Teachers and students are generally positive toward digital games in English language learning, and they see potential effects of using games in class. However, teachers find it difficult to implement digital games due to different obstacles, such as preparation time, lack of knowledge, and finding quality games.

To gain a deeper understanding of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers’ knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs about written feedback (WF), this thesis explored four Swedish upper secondary school EFL teachers’ cognitions about WF, the sources of their cognitions about WF, and ways in which their cognitions about WF are reflected in their actual feedback practices. To carry out this exploratory investigation, the study made use of semi-structured interviews, sample student texts with teacher WF, and stimulated recall interviews. Using thematic analysis, the findings revealed five main themes of cognitions about WF: WF as a tool based on student needs, basis for discussion, precise error, progression tracker, and self-sufficiency. The findings also show that the three main sources of cognitions about WF were receiving WF, practicum & teacher education, and learning by doing. An implication of this study is that EFL teachers need to give different types of WF depending on the learner.

L2 listening research has moved toward a focus on understanding the process of listening. However, there are still few detailed studies of L2 listening that reveal learners’ comprehension processes when listening to scripted and unscripted listening texts. Studies in which such processing has been discussed have lacked detailed diagnoses of how bottom-up and top-down processing interactively affect listeners’ comprehension. This study was designed to show how listeners’ process and comprehend texts, with a focus on how their bottom-up and top-down processing either assist or impede their comprehension. In this study, a group of 30 L1 Japanese university English language learners’ listening abilities were diagnosed. The 30 participants were at three listening proficiency levels—high, mid, and low—based on TOEIC listening proficiency scores. The diagnostic procedure involved participants listening to two scripted and two unscripted listening texts and then reporting what they comprehended through three tasks—L1 oral recalls, L2 repetitions, and verbal reports. Other data was also collected in the study to relate the comprehension of listening texts to other important listening-related variables including listening proficiency, lexical knowledge, listening anxiety, study abroad experience, short-term phonological memory, and working memory. The main finding of the study was that miscomprehension of listening texts was invariably multi-causal, with a combination of both bottom-up and top-down factors leading to comprehension difficulty. Although not a new finding, the study offered more detail than current research about how bottom-up and top-down processing occur interactively. Regarding the overall difficulty of the listening texts, unscripted texts were more difficult to comprehend than scripted texts, and high-proficiency participants had fewer listening difficulties overall than mid- and low-proficiency participants. Quantitative and qualitative results revealed common processing difficulties among all participants due to L1-related phonological decoding issues (e.g., /l/ vs. /r/), connected speech, unknown lexis, and a lack of familiarity with unscripted speech hesitation phenomena (e.g., um, like). Qualitative transcript examples showed how top-down knowledge influenced misinterpretations of words and phrases interactively with bottom-up information, making inaccurate understandings of listening difficult to overcome. In addition to revealing participants’ difficulties and the severity of their comprehension difficulties, the diagnostic procedure showed common strengths—key words and phrases understood well by participants. High-frequency vocabulary and shorter utterances were both shown to be comprehended well. Finally, quantitative results in the study revealed relationships of participants’ listening comprehension with other important listening related variables. Listening proficiency and listening anxiety had strong relationships with listening comprehension of the listening texts. Working memory and short-term phonological memory had no relationship with listening text comprehension. Finally, study abroad experience showed a relationship with comprehension, but with many caveats, and listening vocabulary knowledge was not related with comprehension, but again, with numerous caveats to consider. Based on the results, theoretical and pedagogical implications were posed. Theoretical implications from the study relate to the understanding of four concerns in L2 listening research. Mainly, data in the study will aid researchers’ understanding of how L2 English listeners process speech interactively (i.e., with bottom-up and top-down information) for comprehension, how L2 English listeners experience connected speech, how L2 listeners deal with unknown lexis, and how L2 listeners experience difficulties with features of unscripted speech. Pedagogical implications of the study include the need for increased teacher and learner awareness of the complexity of L2 listening, the need to have learners to track their own listening development, and the need for teachers to expose learners to unscripted listening texts and make them familiar with features of unscripted speech. Finally, suggestions for further research are posed, including conducting diagnostics assessments of L2 listening with listeners of different L1s and with more varied proficiency levels, using different diagnostic procedures to examine L2 listening comprehension, and using more instruments to understand listening-related variables’ relationships with L2 listening comprehension. / Teaching & Learning

The Swedish society is becoming more and more multicultural. This means that the classrooms today consist of students from various backgrounds and cultures. According to the Swedish curriculum for primary school, it should be a social and cultural meeting place for children from various backgrounds and cultures, so that they can learn to live together in harmony through their education. Many researchers around the world come to the conclusion that children’s literature can be used to teach topics such as culture and cultural awareness and to create intercultural learning. Despite this agreement, however, children’s literature is not frequently used in the English classroom in grades 4-6 in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to examine how English children’s literature can be used in grades 4-6 to teach the ethical values reflected in the Swedish curriculum, especially those that concern integration. I will look at selection criteria for children’s literature with the purpose to teach some of the ethical values from the Swedish curriculum in the second-language classroom. Two primary sources serve as examples: Anthony Browne, Voices in the park, and Patricia Polacco, Chicken Sunday. Through a final discussion of methods, such as Aidan Chambers’ book talk, I show how these books may indeed be used to integrate teaching of the fundamental values with English as a school subject.

Extramural English (EE) engagement is common amongst young English as a foreign language (EFL) learner in Sweden. However, the ESL students engage in EE activities to varying degrees and their English proficiency could be positively affected by the amount of time spent on EE activities. The present study therefore aims to increase knowledge about grade 6 students’ EE engagement and its possible correlate with the students’ English grades in a Swedish context. Additionally, the study explores which types of EE activities: receptive, productive, and interactive, the students engage most in, and if there is some correlation between type of EE activity engaged in and English grade. This was investigated through mixed-method research, conducting both a quantitative digital questionnaire with 30 participant sixth graders and two qualitative focus group interviews with a total of five sixth graders participating. The findings show that the grade 6 students with high English grades engage most in interactive EE activities, whereas low-grade English students mostly engage in receptive EE activities. Additionally, the qualitative results indicate that grade 6 students perceive benefits of learning English through EE engagement. However, the present study cannot prove any statistically significant correlation between number of hours spent on EE activities per week and English grades. The present study suggests that EFL teachers consider and incorporate the increasing EE engagement of their students in the didactic choices made for English language teaching (ELT). To comprehensively explore the effects that young ESL learners’ EE engagement has on their English acquisition and grades, further research should focus on longitudinal studies, representing a greater variety and number of students participating.