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No description available.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the existence of a boy crisis in the French classes, located throughout Swedish high schools. The main focus of the thesis is to determine whe-ther or not the teachers feel as though there are differences between males and females in three different main focuses. The three different focuses include the pupils’ headcount, their behaviours, and their performances. Due to the fact that the results are capable of being weig-hed in the favour of the boy crisis or quite the opposite, the thesis firstly defines the two oppo-site ideologies that concern the boy crisis. On one hand, there is a camp that considers the boy crisis a reality and on the other hand, there is another camp that believes this crisis is only a myth. The main material/method is composed of a series of interviews created by two French tea-chers who work in different high schools, located in two different communes in the southern areas of Sweden. The results of the conversations revealed that it is rather difficult to preci-sely determine if there is actually a boy crisis in the class of French in Sweden’s high schools. In terms of headcount, there is a big difference between boys and girls, as there are only a few boys in French classes. This is due to the fact that the male pupils tend to pick an alternative such as Swedish and English, instead of studying a modern language such as French, which actually shows the premise of a boy crisis here. However, boys are doing well in terms of be-haviour and performances. As a matter of fact, they are doing just as well as the girls. Accor-ding to each teacher, generalization is considered inappropriate because not everything per-tains to gender. Instead, they believe it is about the personality, as well as motivation of the particular individual.

Abstract Syftet med studien är att undersöka och diskutera attityder till engelska inslag i svenska språket hos vuxna och ungdomar på ett småstadsgymnasium. De forskningsfrågor som ställs är om språkattityderna mestadels positiva eller negativa, om det finns någon skillnad mellan åldersgruppernas språkattityder och om engelska inslag accepteras olika mycket. En enkät genomfördes med ungdomar i åldern 15–17 och till vuxna i åldern 21–63. Samtliga informanter studerar eller arbetar på samma gymnasium. Undersökningen visar att majoriteten av informanterna har positiva språkattityder till engelska inslag i svenskan. Ungdomarna är mer positiva än de vuxna, men även majoriten vuxna är positivt inställda. Varken ungdomarna eller de vuxna gör någon skillnad på om orden visar anpassning till svenska språket eller inte. Det är möjligt att acceptansen av orden snarare beror på vad orden har för användningsområde, betydelse och känsloladdning. Båda åldersgrupperna visar mer acceptans för engelska ord och uttryck i kommunikationsfälten ungdomstidningar och sociala media. Två andra fält, nyhetstidningar och skoltexter, har en mer seriös prägel och informanterna gör en viss skillnad på vilka fält orden kan användas i.

Abstract This essay concerns a qualitative case study seeking to understand six boys’ reading habits and to investigate why it is that some boys who do not like reading nevertheless display good reading comprehension according to the results achieved for that skill in national tests. The study shows that the boys’ perception of reading has a lot to do with the contact they have with books when they are small. Whether or not there are adult role models in the home and whether the early encounter with texts in school is a positive or negative experience is significant for the boys’ later attitude to reading. In school they need to learn different strategies for reading comprehension and to be given time to develop them. Important aspects such as self-image and peer pressure are relevant here. The study also shows that the boys acquire narratives in other ways than through literature, such as through films, computer games, communication by means of chat and text messages. Reading is very much about finding the motivation to want to read. This study shows that it is important for continued reading development to find the right book with an exciting and plausible plot with which the pupil can identify. Most important of all, however, seems to be talking about books. Conversations about the plot and contents of books which gives a deeper understanding of the world seems to be crucial for whether the boys in the study will go on reading or not.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this essay is to analyze how two teaching aids is representing ethnicity and how the teaching aids is maintaining the multicultural view, as the Swedish curriculum recommends (Lgr 2011). The two teaching aids are What's Up (2007) and Wings (2010). Ajagán - Lester (1999) claims in his article that the western norm is represented in teaching aids and how the representation of "The other" is important part of our worldview because of the fact "The Other" is contradiction to "Us". Ajagán - Lester (1999) also believes teaching aids construct an ethnic self - understanding and that this plays an important role in how other cultures and ethnicities are introduced in teaching aids. Lgr (2011) advocate since there is pupils with different cultural backgrounds, nationalities and experiences it is important to work for the same democratic values and principles in all Swedish Schools. In addition, it isimportant to emphasize the ethos that humans are different by introducing the pupils to different nationalities and socialites.In order to make the analysis the study is based on reader - response theory, the theory emphasize an ingoing examination of a text, as a result the analysis indicated that What's Up and Wings are introducing ethnicity with the concept of nation and the teaching aids are only present and explain the nations from an Western world perspective.

This study explores a methodology to measure the receptive cognate status of a second language (L2) vocabulary from a specific learner group’s perspective. In order to isolate the interlingual cognate effect (being able to grasp the meaning of a L2 word in context thanks to the similarity to an etymologically related word in L1 or another known L2) from the intralingual transparency effect (interpret a complex word thanks to its components), the 1406 content words consisting of one lexical morpheme only and being the most frequent in its word family were selected from a frequency list of 4034 words. Each German word was categorized according to its formal similarity to its closest Swedish cognate. 25 percent have even identical graphical form, further 30 percent are phonologically predictable. Only 6 percent lack a relevant cognate. A semantic analysis shows that the Swedish cognate is also the translation equivalent for 90 percent of the direct cognates, and very few of the others have a potentially deceptive meaning. 77 students at a beginners’ course at Stockholm University answered an open-ended vocabulary test based on these words, as isolated items and in context sentences translated into Swedish. The correct answers suggest that Swedish students have a 70 percent head-start in learning German core words receptively. The erroneous answers confirm that the learners look for similarities to L1 Swedish words, and in much higher degree than assumed from the psychotypological distance, to L2 English words. Some pedagogical implications of exploiting the full cognate effect are discussed.

Nachkriegsliteratur, oder Kahlschlags- bzw. Trümmerliteratur wurde zwischen 1945 und 1950 geschrieben. Es war die junge Schriftstellergeneration in der Westzone, die von ihren Erfahrungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus, dem Krieg, dem Leben in Trümmern schrieb. Die Themen dieser Literatur sind demnach Krieg, Tod, Untergang, Gefangenschaft, Trümmer, Heimkehr und Überlebungskampf. Wolfgang Borcherts Drama Draußen vor der Tür ist das wichtigste Beispiel für die Trümmerliteratur und eins der wenigen Dramen, das in der Nachkriegszeit großes Publikum fand. In seinem Drama Draußen vor der Tür, das Borchert einige Monate vor seinem Tod im Jahre 1947 schrieb, geht es um einen Soldaten, Beckmann, der nach 3 Jahren Gefangenschaft in Sibirien in seine zertrümmerte Heimat zurückkehrt. Das Drama wird als ein Protestschrei gegen den Krieg gesehen. Mit Wolfgang Borcherts Lebensgeschichte als Hintergrund entstand die Frage, welche biographischen Berührungspunkte sich in Borcherts Drama Draußen vor der Tür finden lassen, also welche persönlichen Erlebnisse, Erfahrungen, Eigenschaften und Werte werden in seinem Drama widergespiegelt oder zum Ausdruck gebracht.