Reading among young people is decreasing, which is worrying, considering that good reading skills are crucial for personal development as well as for understanding the modern society. The objective of the present study has been to explore the practice of using textless books to favour reading, since research shows that there are some advantages in doing so. To that purpose, seven interviews were conducted with librarians, educators and a creativity coach who all had previous experience with working with textless books, i.e., books where the readers use their own imagination to navigate through the narrative with the aid of the pictures in the book, often in a social context. The study is based on qualitative research, where interview transcriptions were used for identifying themes, further analysed using a model for reading motivation by the researcher Linda Gambrell. The results show that there are some advantages with working with textless books, not least the many ways to use them. The study’s informants support previous research that have shown that textless books favour reading development and increases vocabulary. Some of the specific advantages according to the informants are that such books can evoke imagination, that the readers are in some sense ‘equal’, since the demands on them are low, there’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to read the books, and everybody succeeds in reading, and that the books seem to encourage further reading. The conclusions of the study are that textless books can motivate further reading and thu

In the year of 2015, 35.000 refugee children arrived to Sweden. In Sweden education is a matter of right, every child has the right to attend school no matter if s/he is a citizen or a refugee. According to the Swedish Curriculum for Compulsory school, all teaching should be adapted to the individual student’s circumstances and needs. The aim of this degree project is to investigate how wordless picturebooks (Silent Books) could be used as a language learning tool in order to promote language acquisition among newly arrived children in Sweden. Firstly, this paper provides an overview of background knowledge, theories and concepts about wordless picturebooks and second language learning. The literature review indicates that the content of the books and the social context is important while learning a language. It also shows that picturebooks can be used in order to grow a cultural understanding among young learners with different cultural backgrounds. In the empirical study we employed semi-structured interviews with people from Sweden, Italy and England. We also carried out field research on Lampedusa, Italy, which included observations and interviews. The major conclusions of this study are that Silent Books is one tool of many, which could be used while learning a language. Silent Books is particular good since it lets the student base her/his language learning in one’s earlier knowledge and experiences as well as language level. The pictures are the starting point, and the learning process starts with what you see in the picture.

I detta examensarbete undersöktes syftet hur pedagoger i förskolan förhåller sig till ordlösa bilderböcker. Metoden som användes var kvantitativ metod med digitala enkäter som skickades ut via grupper på Facebook. Pedagogerna valdes ut med ett konsekutivt urval och enkäten inbringade totalt 59 svar. Resultatet av enkäten analyserades med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys med fokus i den sociokulturella teorin. Resultatet från enkätstudien visade att pedagoger hade en positiv inställning till ordlösa bilderböcker samt att de flesta pedagogerna använde eller hade använt sig av böckerna inom verksamheten. Den främsta anledningen till användningen var för att stimulera barnens språkutveckling. För att göra barnen delaktiga i berättande framgick det av resultatet att de skapade berättelserna tillsammans och att pedagogerna efterfrågade deras tankar. Detta möjliggjorde att den ordlösa bilderboken kunde vara medierande för barns språkutveckling i samspel med andra.