As of Spring 2013, this is the first research study of its type which has looked at and analyzed the results of qualitative interviews conducted with Kurdish Iraqi students studying abroad in the government's, Mhe-HCDP, foreign study abroad program. The study looks at student's actual experiences and perceptions about the program, as well as their recommendations for improving the program. The study also looked at the overall goals and acknowledged problems within the program as established by the Iraqi Mhe reports of 2010 and 2011. The study found a considerable amount of agreement between problems identified by the Mhe and problems recognized by the students in the program. Moreover, the research surveyed a considerable amount of literature in the field of study abroad programs which correlate directly too many of the problems identified by both the Mhe and the students. Several of the problems identified in this research pertain to the need for more ESL programs, more "pre-departure" orientation programs, more coordination between Iraqi universities and host universities, more cultural training, more emphasis on pedagogical structures related to critical thinking, reading, and writing, as well as the need for more education in the area of conducting advanced, post-secondary, research in western institutions and more programmatic support at host universities. The study presents the results of 25 qualitative interviews with students, 3 interviews with program administrators, and one interview with a former minister of the Mhe and lists the recommendations and observations all of them have about the existing study abroad program.

In order to be able to influence the motivation of second language learners one first has to understand what motivation is, what its preconditions are and how to detect it. The research for this essay was done with the help of one hundred and ten students from seven classes in two different upper secondary schools and most of these learners were first year students. The aim was to find and measure the students' motivation to learn English and how this motivation can be influenced in a positive manner. The method used to collect the necessary data was a questionnaire which asked questions about the relevancy of the English course and how frequently the students used English and how interested they were in the language. The results give a clear picture of the students' motivational levels as well as to which parts of the English course they respond and to which they do not.

The Swedish National Agency for Education recently begun explicitly promoting teaching through self-regulation strategies in national steering documents intended for teachers, following a number of other countries world wide (Skolverket, 2012; LGY 11; Dalland & Klette, 2016). The goal of self-regulation strategies is for the students to take control of their own learning process, and though there is research on the benefits of self-regulation strategies and motivation, these ideas are based on abstract concepts and biological processes in the brain, that are very difficult to measure (Zimmerman, 1990; Hattie, 2012; Simpson & Balsam, 2016; Schumann, 2004). As such, more research on these strategies is warranted, and little has been done to evaluate their effects on Swedish upper secondary school students. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to attempt to operationalize the theoretical concepts of self-regulation strategies in order to calculate the correlation between students perceived usage of self-regulation strategies, and English performance, with a special focus on motivation. This was done by operationalizing motivation and self-regulation strategies into six variables based on previous research, and then surveying 40 English 05 (year one) students at Enskilda Gymnasiet upper secondary school in Stockholm, and then running correlation tests with their grades from a grammar test the week after the survey, as well as with their overall grade from the previous year. The results showed almost no statistically significant correlations between the students´ grades, and the students self-reported usage of self-regulation strategies. The exception was a statistically significant positive correlation between high levels of intrinsic motivation and good grades. The causes of these results are not specified within the parameters of this research project, however, it could be that there simply were no correlations between the perceived usage of self-regulation strategies and performance due to the strategies not having an effect on performance, or because the strategies were not being used properly. However, it could also be that the operationalizing of the variables in the questionnaire did not generate accurate levels of usage of these strategies. Either way, the results of this essay stress the need for further research that evaluates the effect of self-regulation strategies and motivation on learning English.

This thesis analyzes the teaching material Caminando 3 from a neurodidactic perspective. The discipline of neurodidactics is young and controversial and the aim of this investigation is to present an understanding of the use of practical applications of neurodidactics in written material of education in Spanish as a second language. The methods applied are a quantitative and objective analysis of measurable aspects in Caminando 3 and a qualitative, subjective analysis which is interpreting fundamental understandings of language learning which Caminando 3 reflects in its structure and content. The results show that there are several aspects in Caminando 3 which are supported by the evidences and advices of the neurodidactic theories and simultaneously there are details in exercises and parts of the layup containing a level of repetition and prediction which are directly harmful to the process of acquisition, according to neurodidactic theories. The conclusion is that a more dynamic teaching book can be produced with guidelines that can be created using these results. Further investigations will have to measure the knowledge and success of the pupils to decide whether neurodidactics is a successful complement to traditional didactics of second language learning.

This paper is a study within the general area of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), focusing on second language learning in formal (class room) settings. The main questions discussed in this essay are firstly, whether social factors matter while learning a second language, secondly, to what extent attitudes towards the second language matter and thirdly, what attitudes students actually have towards studying a second language. The paper compares both students and teachers in the UK and Sweden. To be able to make this comparison I travelled to the UK and followed a class at the University of Wolverhampton that study Swedish. This paper has benefited from both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative part consists of a questionnaire that was handed out to the students in both England and Sweden. For the qualitative part of my research I made use of the structured interview form, which is a method that has a compact nest of questions and where the sequence of questions is decided before the interview. I interviewed two students and one teacher in each of the countries that this paper covers. The social factors that this paper recognises are age, gender, social class and ethnic identity. Furthermore, the essay examines the impact of students’ motivation and attitudes while studying and learning a new language. It has been demonstrated that motivation has a major role to play while learning a second language. It can be argued that the more motivated students are the more and better they will learn. According the students in question their opinions are that you have to have a good teacher while learning languages, i.e. a teacher that can encourage you and make you develop. On the other hand the teachers in question said that the students must be interested in learning second languages otherwise it is pointless since they will not develop. The findings of the present paper are analysed in the light of previous research published in this field.

When speaking a language, whether it is our first or second language, grammatical mistakes will be made. The aim of this essay is to look into what kinds of mistakes some Swedish learners of English make when speaking English and to analyze why these mistakes are made. The essay also aims at looking into what grammar teaching can look like in Sweden and how some teachers look upon their students’ oral proficiency. The method used for this study was a qualitative one, namely interviews. Twelve students, eight in grade seven and four in grade nine, and two teachers were interviewed. During the interviews with the students a dictaphone was used. When interviewing the teachers notes were taken, and these have been the foundation of the analysis. The results showed that many of the mistakes made by the students seemed to originate in transfer from their first language. Preposition mistakes, for instance, were made in 20% of the cases and they mainly originated in interference with their first language. Verbs turned out to be the area where most mistakes were made, followed by prepositions and pronouns. 50% of the mistakes made by students in grade nine were verb mistakes, whereas the students in grade seven made verb mistakes in 33% of the cases. This study further shows that the teachers had a good grasp of what their students know, and do not know, but there were some mistakes the learners made which the teachers did not mention. Finally, the study showed that spoken language is in focus within the classroom. Students are allowed to make mistakes, even though the interviewed teachers find grammar important.

This essay investigates native Swedish speakers’ problems in the area of prepositions. A total of 19 compositions, including 678 prepositions, written by native Swedish senior high school students were analysed. All the prepositions in the material were judged as either basic, systematic or idiomatic. Then all the errors of substitution, addition and omission were counted and corrected. As hypothesised, least errors were found in the category of basic prepositions and most errors were found in the category of idiomatic prepositions. However, the small difference between the two categories of systematic and idiomatic prepositions suggests that the learners have greater problems with systematic prepositions than what was first thought to be the case. Basic prepositions cause little or no problems. Systematic prepositions, i.e. those that are rule governed or whose usage is somehow generalisable, seem to be quite problematic to native Swedish speakers. Idiomatic prepositions seem to be learnt as ‘chunks’, and the learners are either aware of the whole constructions or do not use them at all. They also cause some problems for Swedish speakers. Since prepositions are often perceived as rather arbitrary without rules to sufficiently describe them, these conclusions might not be surprising to teachers, students and language learners. The greatest error cause was found to be interference from Swedish, and a few errors could be explained as intralingual errors. It seems as if the learners’ knowledge of their mother tongue strongly influences the acquisition of English prepositions.

This study aims to investigate how schools work with dyslexic pupils and to understand how they are approached in education by their teachers. The purpose is also to distinguish, from a teacher’s perspective, what type of difficulties dyslexia represents. The main interest is to investigate if there are any differences in what the research says about dyslexia and how it is perceived by teachers who are working with dyslexic pupils. The method of gathering information in this essay is based on interviews with regular teachers who have Swedish and English as their main subjects, as well as interviews with special education teachers. This is combined with examining research on the topic. A set of schools driven by the municipality in Kalmar were chosen for this essay, which restricts the number of interviews. This essay concludes that the interviewed teachers provided a successful education for dyslexic pupils. A successful concept was to provide computers to dyslexic pupils to assist and alter their learning process.

Abstract The present study aims to map out the extent to which bilingual Sweden-Finnish teenagers can make use of their second language Swedish in order to communicate pragmatic information. The main aim is to study whether speakers of a second language can achieve near-native competence in the second language, i.e. whether their conversational style is identical with that of first-language speakers. The material consists of audiotaped simulated dialogues. The starting-point of the analysis is the idea that the conversational strategies used by a speaker reveal his global conversational style. The present study is concerned with very advanced second-language speakers. They were born in Sweden to Finnish families, with Finnish as their first language. The official language in school and elsewhere in society is Swedish. However, they live in a society which is highly bilingual and where Finnish can be used – and is used by the present informants – in everyday life in more informal contexts. Even though the informants can be regarded as very advanced speakers of Swedish, the analysis suggests that their use of Swedish is different from that of the native speakers. Furthermore, the analysis shows no signs of pragmatic transfer from the Sweden-Finnish speakers' first language Finnish into their second language Swedish – or vice versa. The Sweden-Finnish speakers follow a Finnish conversational style when speaking Finnish, but they do not transfer this style into their performance in Swedish. Nevertheless, their conversational style in Swedish deviates from that of native Swedish speakers. / Abstrakt Föreliggande avhandling har som syfte att beskriva tvåspråkiga sverigefinska ungdomars sätt att använda sig av andraspråket svenska när det gäller det pragmatiska språkbruket. Det övergripande målet i analysen är att studera om andraspråkstalare kan nå infödd nivå i andraspråket, dvs. om deras samtalsstil på andraspråket är identisk med infödda talares. Materialet består av simulerade dialoger. Analysen utgår från tanken att de strategier som talare använder sig av i interaktion avspeglar den övergripande, globala samtalsstil som gäller i ett helt samtal. Det gäller här mycket avancerade andraspråkstalare. De är födda i Sverige i finskspråkiga familjer med finska som förstaspråk. Det officiella språket i skolan och i övrigt i samhället är svenska. Det aktuella samhället är dock starkt tvåspråkigt där finska kan användas – och används av de aktuella informanterna – i det vardagliga livet i mer informella kontexter. även om det är fråga om mycket avancerade andraspråkstalare, tyder den aktuella analysen på att det finns drag i deras andraspråk svenska som avviker från de infödda talarnas språkbruk. Analysen avslöjar vidare inga tecken på pragmatisk transfer från de sverigefinska informanternas förstaspråk finska över till deras svenska – eller omvänt. De ser ut att följa den finska samtalsstilen i samtal på finska men överför inte denna stil till samtal på svenska.

Listening is the most common skill we use in communication with others, even though it might be the most difficult skill to learn. Recent research shows that pupils receive most information in school by listening, and other research shows that it is relatively common that pupils, instead of using strategies while listening, just listen for specific words. This essay aims to examine pupils´ listening-strategies in English as a second language. By interviews with both pupils and teachers in two different schools, and observations I have investigated listening-strategies. The results of this study show that children at the age of eleven and twelve do apply listening strategies. Some pupils are aware of their comprehension skills in listening, while others do not exactly know what they are doing, but they actually have a strategy for listening. Even though there is little research about this topic, there is developmental work in Sweden which we need to be aware of. Teachers play a role in teaching and developing listening strategies, and this study investigates particularly the importance of metacognitive strategies. In a future perspective listening strategies are very important for language learners.