We are constantly surrounded by language, which affects our view of ourselves and the world around us. Children are especially affected by their language environment and will often adapt their speech to fit in among their friends. Nowadays it seems like cursing and insults has become more common among young students in the school environment, which worries us. This study presents our research on what we call problematic language, it is specified on students in middle school and their experience of the use of curses and insults around them. Our research was done by qualitative interviews with both students and teachers as the aim was to get different perspectives on how the students are affected. We have chosen to take the social perspective of language in our study together with the perspectives of previous research in the field of offensive language. What we discovered was that the students have a different view of the language use than teachers do. How words are perceived is very individual, it depends on the situation and the relations to those around. What is clear is that students get affected by their language environment and therefore need support and guidance in order to understand the effects of problematic language use. With this study we intend to bring awareness and knowledge that can benefit a healthy language environment for students in school and after school care

Abstract This dissertation is aimed at exploring the utilization of select works by children's book author Markéta Zinnerová in literary education. The selected texts all feature a child protagonist in a difficult life situation with regards to their immediate or wider family circle. The vantage point was primarily the ouvre of M. Zinnerová, particularly the titles Indiáni z Větrova ('The Indians from Větrov'), Tajemství proutěného košíku ('The Secret of the Woven Basket'), and Kde padají hvězdy ('Where Stars Fall'). The dissertation is divided into a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part contains first a description of the general characteristics of narrative prose from the life of children with an emphasis on the issues of personal and social education. Furthermore, it focuses in detail on the utilisation of prose in literary education in primary schools, the methodology and different types of literary analysis and the insertion of all these activities into the relevant curriculum. The practical part deals with concrete classical and activising methods of application with regards to select texts from M. Zinnerová's works. The aim of the dissertation was to create work sheets based on excerpts from the prose of this author and to test them in practice in the environment of an after-school care centre where primary school children were to engage with them. This part of the dissertation describes said work sheets as well as the procedural methodology and the reasoning behind their creation. The work sheets were used when working with 3rd -grade school children in an after-school care centre. The ways in which they cooperated with us and were captivated by the texts, as well as the precise way in which the activities involved in working with the proposed sheets proceeded are described in the following chapter of the practical part. The concluding reflection upon the utilisation of the work sheets proposes certain possible corrections, expansions or other possible uses of these work sheets.