<p>Sammanfattning</p><p>Språket och hur vi kommunicerar med varandra intresserar mig mycket och det är därför som jag har skrivit denna uppsats.</p><p>En av lärarens främsta uppgifter på de lägre stadierna i grundskolan är att ge eleverna verktygen för att hitta ett fungerande skriftspråk och att ”knäcka läskoden” som professor Ingvar Lundberg säger. Men hur går det då för de elever som har problem med sin språkutveckling? Hur ser andra lärare på problematiken? Är en dålig språkutveckling en avgörande faktor för att barns läsinlärning inte fortskrider som förväntat? Tas det hänsyn i dagens skola till barn med språkstörning? Genom en intervjuundersökning, vill jag undersöka hur erfarna lärare uppfattar problematiken.</p><p>Då språket är av yttersta betydelse för människans tänkande, lärande och kommunikation vill jag med den här uppsatsen ta reda på lärares och specialpedagogers uppfattningar om fenomenet ”språkstörning” och även dess inverkan på inlärningen av t.ex. läsning och skrivning.</p><p>Jag har i min undersökning bland erfarna lärare funnit att de är mycket lösningsinriktade och ägnar sig i mycket hög grad åt att åtgärda problemet istället för att hitta orsakerna till en språkstörning.</p><p>Vidare kan man säga att en språkstörning först och främst får stora konsekvenser för barnet. Att få kontakt med andra människor och att kunna kommunicera är viktigt för vår utveckling och för barn med språkstörning så fungerar inte detta på ett bra sätt. Utan förmågan att kunna kommunicera med sina kamrater kan ett barn lätt ställas utanför gemenskapen och det kan i sin tur leda till beteendeproblem.</p> / <p>Abstract</p><p>As the language is of the outmost importance for man’s thinking, learning and communicating, my purpose with this essay is to find out how teachers and special teachers apprehend the phenomenon “Language impairment in children”.</p><p>To help children to learn how to read and write is an important task for the teachers. But how do the pupils with language impairment manage to learn how to read and write? Do the teachers have the education required to take care of children with language impairment?</p><p>What do other teachers have to say in the matter? Are children with language impairment recognized in the Swedish Schools?</p><p>Through an interview survey, I want to find out what experienced teachers have to say in the matter.</p><p>The result shows that experienced teachers mostly try to correct the problems instead of pondering on what could have caused the impairment.</p><p>Further it can be said that language impairment will primarily result in grave consequences for the child. To be able to make contact with other people and to be able to communicate is important for our development, and for children with language impairment this is not easily done. Without the ability to communicate with its friends the child can easily be put on the outside of the Community and can therefore perhaps develop behaviour problems.</p>

Sammanfattning Språket och hur vi kommunicerar med varandra intresserar mig mycket och det är därför som jag har skrivit denna uppsats. En av lärarens främsta uppgifter på de lägre stadierna i grundskolan är att ge eleverna verktygen för att hitta ett fungerande skriftspråk och att ”knäcka läskoden” som professor Ingvar Lundberg säger. Men hur går det då för de elever som har problem med sin språkutveckling? Hur ser andra lärare på problematiken? Är en dålig språkutveckling en avgörande faktor för att barns läsinlärning inte fortskrider som förväntat? Tas det hänsyn i dagens skola till barn med språkstörning? Genom en intervjuundersökning, vill jag undersöka hur erfarna lärare uppfattar problematiken. Då språket är av yttersta betydelse för människans tänkande, lärande och kommunikation vill jag med den här uppsatsen ta reda på lärares och specialpedagogers uppfattningar om fenomenet ”språkstörning” och även dess inverkan på inlärningen av t.ex. läsning och skrivning. Jag har i min undersökning bland erfarna lärare funnit att de är mycket lösningsinriktade och ägnar sig i mycket hög grad åt att åtgärda problemet istället för att hitta orsakerna till en språkstörning. Vidare kan man säga att en språkstörning först och främst får stora konsekvenser för barnet. Att få kontakt med andra människor och att kunna kommunicera är viktigt för vår utveckling och för barn med språkstörning så fungerar inte detta på ett bra sätt. Utan förmågan att kunna kommunicera med sina kamrater kan ett barn lätt ställas utanför gemenskapen och det kan i sin tur leda till beteendeproblem. / Abstract As the language is of the outmost importance for man’s thinking, learning and communicating, my purpose with this essay is to find out how teachers and special teachers apprehend the phenomenon “Language impairment in children”. To help children to learn how to read and write is an important task for the teachers. But how do the pupils with language impairment manage to learn how to read and write? Do the teachers have the education required to take care of children with language impairment? What do other teachers have to say in the matter? Are children with language impairment recognized in the Swedish Schools? Through an interview survey, I want to find out what experienced teachers have to say in the matter. The result shows that experienced teachers mostly try to correct the problems instead of pondering on what could have caused the impairment. Further it can be said that language impairment will primarily result in grave consequences for the child. To be able to make contact with other people and to be able to communicate is important for our development, and for children with language impairment this is not easily done. Without the ability to communicate with its friends the child can easily be put on the outside of the Community and can therefore perhaps develop behaviour problems.

In recent years interest in L2 reading research has focused largely on word frequency, sentence level, word recognition, and several researchers have begun to use eye tracking to better study reading behaviors. Parshina et al. (under review) have found that high proficiency heritage speakers of Russian read faster in terms of gaze duration and total time and had fewer regressions than low proficiency heritage speakers. The current study focuses on the establishment of benchmarks for L2 Russian readers in terms of first fixation duration, gaze duration, and total time when reading a complete passage, and compares these variables among different proficiency levels. Thirty-two students participated in the study with proficiency levels ranging from Novice to Superior. Subjects completed eye tracking and reading comprehension passages with the use on an eye tracker to asses reading abilities. Results show that all participants read L1 significantly faster than L2 in terms of first fixation duration. Additionally, all proficiency levels read Intermediate passages faster than Advanced passages. These results help establish the first benchmarks for eye tracking in Russian as an L2.

The purpose of this study is to examine how two educators at a preschool that is located in a neighborhood south of Stockholm works with TAKK with children who has Down syndrome in a language promotion purposes. The aim is also to investigate what teachers think about using TAKK with children without special needs and children with Down syndrome. In this study, I used qualitative research methods. I've used both observations and interviews to get answers to my questions. The theories which I have used in this thesis is, socio-cultural perspective, including integration and segregated integration. In order to find out how the educators work with TAKK I have asked these questions: How do the educators work with TAKK with children with Down syndrome from a language development perspective? What do the educators express about using TAKK with children without special needs and with children who has Down syndrome? My conclusions to these questions are that the literatures I have read in many ways are consistent with how they work. They told me, among other things, that the use of TAKK is good for both the children with and without Down syndrome. Regarding to how they use TAKK in their everyday work I could see that they used TAKK on a daily basis in the routines at the preschool.

This thesis investigates the second language acquisition of the English article system by Turkish learners in order to find out the role of certain semantic universals of the Universal Grammar during the acquisition process. More specifically, the purpose is to see whether or not L1 Turkish learners of English fluctuate between two semantic notions namely / specificity and definiteness, and the effect of this fluctuation on acquisition. 120 students from three groups of learners at different proficiency levels (40 elementary, 40 intermediate and 40 upper &ndash / intermediate students) were tested. Data collection instrument, a forced-choice elicitation task is used. The task consists of 40 short and contextualized dialogues. The target sentence in each dialogue is missing an article and learners were asked to fill the gap with an appropriate article / a/an, the or &Oslash / on the bases of their understanding of the proceeding context. Dialogues in the task belong to four different contexts / i.e. definite/specific, definite/non-specific, indefinite/specific and indefinite/non-specific. Each context has 10 dialogues with four different contexts that are randomized. Data were analyzed using SPSS 17 packet program (descriptive analysis and one-way ANOVA). The results showed that intermediate level learners exhibited fluctuation between definiteness and specificity to a great extent in (+definite/-specific) and (-definite/+specific) contexts. Elementary level learners were more accurate in these contexts exhibiting article omission errors in definite contexts. Overall, despite certain unexpected results, upper intermediate level students were quite successful in article assignment in defined contexts. This revealed that there is a positive correlation between article system acquisition and proficiency.

Syftet med den här studien är att få djupare kunskap om förskolans arbete med språkligt sårbara barn och hur de kan upptäckas i tidig ålder. Genom intervjuer med specialpedagoger och legitimerade förskollärare har jag besvarat frågorna om vilka möjligheter förskollärare har att upptäcka språkstörning, hur förskollärare arbetar och kan arbeta med barn i språklig sårbarhet, samt på vilket sätt specialpedagoger och förskollärare kan samarbeta för att främja språkutvecklingen hos barnen. I studien beskrivs tidigare forskning om barns tidiga språkutveckling och vad som kännetecknar språkstörning, samt hur forskare anser att förskollärare bör arbeta med barn för att främja språkutveckling. Resultatet visade att det fanns en stor medvetenhet bland pedagogerna ute på förskolorna där intervjuerna genomfördes och att arbeta med språk och kommunikation var hos de flesta ett prioriterat mål i verksamheten. Specialpedagogerna framhåller den medvetna närvaron hos förskollärare för att vara ett stöd i den språkliga utvecklingen hos barnen, samt att ha möjlighet att upptäcka de barn som befinner sig i språklig sårbarhet där det kan handla om språkstörning. I undersökningen framkom att tid, kunskap, lyhördhet, närvaro, tillgång till specialpedagog och ett medvetet förhållningssätt utgör de förutsättningar som förskollärare behöver för att upptäcka barn med språkstörning. / The purpose of this study is to gain in-depth knowledge about preschool work with children in linguistic vulnerability and how they can be discovered at an early age. Through interviews with special educators and legitimate preschool teachers, I have answered the questions about what possibilities preschool teachers have to detect language disorder, how preschool teachers work and can work with children in linguistic vulnerability, and how special educators and preschool teachers can collaborate to promote language development in the children. The study describes previous research on children's early language development and what characterize developmental language disorders, as well as how researchers think preschool teachers should work with children to promote language development. The result showed that there was a high level of awareness among the educators at the preschools where the interviews were conducted, and working with language and communication was at most a priority objective in the preschool. Special educators emphasize the conscious presence of preschool teachers to be a support in the linguistic development of the children, as well as being able to discover the children who are in linguistic vulnerability where language disturbance is concerned. The study found that time, knowledge, responsiveness, attendance, access to a special educator and a conscious attitude constitute the prerequisites for pre-school teachers to detect children with language disabilities.

La ricerca offre per la prima volta una disamina ampia, approfondita ed aggiornata degli studi linguistici post-sovietici dedicati alla Russkaja Jazykovaja Kartina Mira; essi dimostrano, attraverso l’analisi semantica delle parole-chiave della lingua russa, l’esistenza di concetti glotto-specifici, e dunque l’esistenza di un quadro del mondo veicolato dalla lingua russa. Nella ricerca viene indagato dapprima il contesto storico-culturale che ha portato al sorgere dell’indirizzo linguistico della RJaKM e viene mostrato il legame esistente tra le ricerche sulla RJaKM e lo sviluppo degli studi di semantica lessicale, nonché l’apporto della linguistica occidentale all’evoluzione della linguistica sovietica. Individuati poi i rappresentanti attualmente più autorevoli degli studi sulla RJaKM - la Scuola di Anna Wierzbicka e la Scuola Semantica di Mosca per la descrizione integrale della lingua e la lessicografia sistemica - si considerano in modo sistematico e comparativo i principi teorici alla base delle rispettive concezioni linguistiche e i metodi di analisi semantica, applicati alla parola russa smirenie, valutandone la loro efficacia. Quindi, si presentano alcune applicazioni della RJaKM e si indicano alcuni strumenti linguistici e lessicografici innovativi, utilizzati o prodotti all’interno di tali studi, particolarmente utili nella didattica della lingua e della linguistica russa. Infine, si offre una valutazione conclusiva del fenomeno studiato, individuando nuove vie di ricerca nell’ambito dell’analisi linguistico-culturale. / This dissertation represents the first extensive and updated research of the post-Soviet linguistic studies dedicated to Russkaja Jazykovaja Kartina Mira. These studies demonstrate the existence of specific language ideas through a semantic analysis of the keywords of the Russian language. As a consequence, these studies also display a perspective on the world vehiculated by the Russian language. The research opens with an investigation of the historical and cultural context that lead to RJaKM’s linguistic disposition and it shows the existing link between analysis on RJaKM and the development of the studies on lexical semantics. It also shows how western linguistics contributed to the evolution of Soviet linguistics. After mentioning the most authoritative and representative experts on RJaKM, such as Anna Wierzkicka’s School and the Moscow Semantic School for the Integrated Description of Language and Systematic Lexicography, this dissertation systematically and comparatively considers the theoretical principles at the base of both schools linguistic ideas and methods of semantic analysis, applying them to the Russian word ‘smirenie,’ and consequently evaluating their effectiveness. As an outcome, this research presents some possible applications of RJaKM and it indicates some innovative linguistic and lexicographic tools which were either employed or even produced at the bosom of RJaKM studies and are especially useful for the teaching of the Russian language and linguistics. In conclusion, this dissertation offers a final evaluation of the studied phenomena, defining new research paths in the fields of linguistics and cultural analysis.