Experts in a field regularly apply a defined set of rules or procedures to carry out a problem-solving task or analysis on a given problem. Often the problem can be represented as a computer model, be it mathematical, chemical, or physics based, and so on. It would certainly be advantageous for a domain expert who is not proficient in software development to express solutions to problems in a domain-specific notation that can be executed as a program. Many new ideas aim to make software development easier and shift the development role closer to the end-user. One such means of development is the use of a small, intuitive programming language called a Domain-Specific Language (DSL.) This dissertation examines a generic approach to constructing a Virtual Machine (VM) to provide the runtime semantics for a particular DSL. It proposes a generic, object-oriented framework, called a VM Framework, in which to build a VM by subtyping abstract instruction and environment classes that are part of the VM Framework. The subtyped classes constitute an environment and an interface called an instruction set architecture and the instructions can access and operate on the environment in a deterministic way to provide the runtime semantics of a DSL program. Both instruction classes and environment classes encapsulate functionality of an existing domain, represented programmatically as a namespace construct. The namespace is home to related classes that provide the various concepts inherent of a domain. These are concepts understood by a domain expert and in this dissertation it is shown how they are exposed as DSL constructs. With the use of compiler writing tools, a compiler can be created for a DSL that generates an appropriate instruction sequence that can be executed by the VM. The grammar of the DSL is shown to feature constructs that allow a domain expert to express concepts of the underlying domain in an intuitive manner. The dissertation details how a VM is configured for a specific set of instructions and an environment. Instruction sets and environments can be extended creating VMs with additional semantics for DSLs that are similar, or contain subsets of semantics of other DSLs. The languages are intended to be intuitive and it is shown using examples how a specific DSL program is mapped to an instruction sequence with the instruction set architecture and environment in mind. Comparative performance in relation to other DSL implementations, including a hard-coded approach of a VM and an interpreted approach are also provided. The VM Framework is proven to be most effective in rapidly prototyping a DSL for a particular problem domain. The dissertation also provides examples of DSLs such as a real-valued expression language and a scene description language that uses a ray-tracer for rendering geometric objects onto a canvas. It is shown how the scene description language is an extension to the real-valued expression language in terms of their underlying VMs. All DSL grammars are provided. / Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Computer Science / MSc / unrestricted

Face à l'augmentation de la taille et de la complexité des systèmeslogiciels, il convient de les décrire à un plus haut niveaud'abstraction (i.e., au-delà du code) avant de concrètement lesimplémenter. Toutefois, l'utilisation de ces descriptions de hautniveau dans les processus de construction et de vérification dessystèmes reste très rudimentaire, ne permettant pas de véritablementguider et faciliter le développement logiciel. Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche pour rendre plus simple etplus sûr le développement de systèmes logiciels. Cette approche reposesur l'utilisation de langages dédiés et sur un couplage fort entre unecouche de spécification et d'architecture et une couched'implémentation. Elle consiste tout d'abord à décrire à un hautniveau d'abstraction différents aspects, à la fois fonctionnels et nonfonctionnels, d'un système dans la couche de spécification etd'architecture. Ces descriptions sont ensuite analysées et utiliséespour personnaliser la couche d'implémentation, afin de faciliter laconstruction et la vérification du système logiciel. Nous illustrons notre approche dans le domaine de l'informatiqueubiquitaire. À la suite d'une analyse complète du domaine, nous avonsconçu deux langages dédiés à l'orchestration d'objets communicants,Pantaxou et Pantagruel. / The sheer size and complexity of today's software systems posechallenges for both their programming and verification, making itcritical to raise the level of abstraction of software developmentbeyond the code. However, the use of high-level descriptions in thedevelopment process still remains rudimentary, improving and guidingthis process marginally.This thesis proposes a new approach to making software developmentsimpler and safer. This approach is based on the use ofdomain-specific languages and a tight coupling between a specificationand architecture layer, and an implementation layer. It consists ofdescribing functional and non-functional aspects of a software systemat a high level of abstraction, using the specification andarchitecture layer. These high-level descriptions are then analyzedand used to customize the implementation layer, greatly facilitatingthe programming and verification of the software system.We have validated our approach in the domain of pervasive computingsystems development. From a complete domain analysis, we haveintroduced two domain-specific languages, Pantaxou and Pantagruel,dedicated to the orchestration of networked smart devices.

Dans les domaines critiques tels que l’avionique, le ferroviaire ou encore l’automobile, il faut, afin de pouvoir certifier un système, démontrer qu’il réalise la fonction pour laquelle il a été conçu, selon des exigences temporelles spécifiées. En effet, un rendu temporel trop long peut rendre des données erronées, et ainsi mettre en danger la sûreté des personnes. Aujourd’hui, la plupart des approches proposent d’assurer ces exigences de Qualité de service au niveau des couches basses, e.g., au travers d’une bande passante déterministe, d’allocation statique d’intervalles de temps, et d’un ordonnancement prédéfini. Ces contraintes assurent que les applications ne peuvent dépasser le temps d’exécution alloué ; les applications récupèrent de ce fait des exigences qui sont découplées de leur fonctionnalité. En revanche, il faut aussi pouvoir certifier des exigences temporelles spécifiques à une application. De là, les garanties au niveau des couches basses ne sont plus suffisantes. Il faudrait pouvoir prendre en compte ces exigences dès la phase de conception des applications. Aujourd’hui, la plupart des approches existant dans ce domaine se concentrent sur le support de QoS à des phases isolées du processus de développement logiciel, empêchant la traçabilité des exigences. Cette thèse propose une approche dirigée par la conception pour supporter les exigences de QoS tout au long du processus de développement logiciel, intégrée dans une méthodologie outillée, appelée DiaSuite. L’extension de QoS enrichit le langage de conception DiaSpec avec la capacité d’instancier les exigences de QoS sur les composants logiciels. Un support de surveillance à l’exécution de ces exigences temporelles est ensuite généré, directement à partir de la spécification. Cette thèse intègre uniformément les concepts temporels avec les concepts de gestion d’erreurs, au travers de la méthodologie DiaSuite, afin de proposer une couche de supervision qui puisse effectuer une reconfiguration applicative, dans le cas de violation de contrat de QoS. Les contributions de cette thèse sont évaluées au regard du respect des critères de cohérence et de conformité, illustrés au travers d’une étude de cas dans le domaine avionique. / In critical domains such as avionics, railways or automotive, to certify a system, it is required to demonstrate that it achieves its function, with respect to specified timing requirements. Indeed, longer-than-predicted function computing can make data erroneous, leading potentially to endanger people lives. Today, most approaches propose to ensure these Quality of Service requirements at platform level, e.g., through deterministic bandwidth, static time slots allocation and predefined scheduling. These constraints ensure applications can’t overpass allocated time slots; applications are then fed with requirements decoupled to their functionality. However, it shall be possible to certify timing requirements, dedicated to an application. Hence, guarantees at platform-level are not sufficient anymore. It should be possible to take into account these requirements from the stage of application design. Today, most of existing approaches in this domain, focus on supporting QoS at individual stages of the software development process, preventing requirements traceability. This thesis proposes a design-driven approach to supporting QoS throughout software development process, integrated in a tool-based methodology, namely DiaSuite. The QoS extension enriches the DiaSpec design language, with the capability to instantiate QoS requirements onto software components. A runtime execution support to monitoring these timing requirements, is then generated, directly from the specification. This thesis uniformly integrates timing concepts with error ones, around DiaSuite methodology, to propose a supervision layer that could lead to application reconfiguration in case of QoS contract violation. Contributions of this thesis are evaluated through respect of coherence and conformance critera, illustrated through a case study in avionics.

The diploma thesis deals with speech and language therapeutic issues. It follows children's speech and language development mainly from morphological - syntactic level. It focuses on grammar skills of children at the beginning of school attendance that are evaluated by a newly developed diagnostic material named Test gramatiky pro školní začátečníky, ie Grammar test for school beginners. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with language ontogenesis and development of language levels with a focus on morphological - syntactic level and its diagnostic. It describes grammar issues in detail, its development as well as diagnostic materials used in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. The third chapter presents various diagnosis related to the research where the grammar language level was observed. Particular attention is dedicated to specific language impairment. The empirical part of the thesis represents quantitative research. It evaluates, on a sample of 170 children, practical use of the new test, which is focused on the grammar language level. The research was completed by the method of observation of children and also the feedback and evaluation of the test by clinical speech and language therapists. Through the analysis of acquired data it was found that children with specific language...

Die Rolle des Arbeitsgedächtnisses für die Sprachentwicklung, insbesondere die Wortschatzentwicklung ist mittlerweile überzeugend nachgewiesen (z.B. Hasselhorn & Werner, 2000). Daran anknüpfend beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Studie mit der Wortschatzentwicklung bei dysgrammatisch bzw. spezifisch sprachgestörten Grundschulkindern und mit dem Einfluss des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses auf diesen Entwicklungsprozess. Besonders die Arbeitsgruppe um Gathercole und Baddeley konnten in einer Vielzahl von Arbeiten (z.B. Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990 a, b, 1993) stabile Zusammenhänge zwischen Arbeitsgedächtnis und Wortschatz bzw. Sprache bei normalentwickelten Kindern und spezifisch sprachgestörten Kindern nachweisen. Sie differenzieren 2 Komponenten des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses: den phonetischen Speicher, in dem akustische Informationen 1,5 bis 2 s erhalten bleibt und dann zerfällt, wenn diese Information nicht durch den Rehearsalprozess, eine Art inneres Sprechen wiederholt und damit aufgefrischt und erhalten wird. Das Arbeitsgedächtnis wurde dabei bevorzugt über das Nachsprechen von Kunstwörtern erfasst. Bezüglich dieses Vorgehen gaben z.B. Snowling, Chiat und Hulme (1991) und Bowey (1996, 2001) zu bedenken, dass durch die Komplexität des Kunstwörternachsprechens und die Redundanz zu anderen Aspekten der sprachlichen Verarbeitung der Einfluss des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses überschätzt werden könnte. Sie schlagen daher vor, eher allgemein von phonologischer Verarbeitung zu sprechen und das phonologische Arbeitsgedächtnis nicht davon zu differenzieren, zumindest müsse die Unabhängigkeit des Einflusses des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses von der phonologischen Bewusstheit nachgewiesen werden. Die Leistungsfähigkeit des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses hängt von den Qualitätsmerkmalen seiner beiden Komponenten ab. Nach Hasselhorn, Grube und Mähler (2000) lassen sich für beide Komponenten jeweils zwei Merkmale identifizieren: Die Qualität des phonetischen Speichers hängt von dessen zeitlich dimensionierter Größe und von der Präzision ab, mit der er akustische Information ablegt und wiedergibt. Die Leistungsfähigkeit des subvokalen Rehearsalprozesses wird von seiner (automatischen) Aktivierbarkeit und seiner Geschwindigkeit bestimmt. Längsschnittlich zeigten Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, & Baddeley (1992) Zusammenhänge zwischen früherem Arbeitsgedächtnis und späterem Wortschatz im Alter bis zu sechs Jahren, im Grundschulalter kehrte sich der Zusammenhang um. Diese Beiträge motivierten die vorliegende Arbeit, in der die Fragen gestellt wurden, ob sich das phonologische Gedächtnis von der phonologischen Verarbeitung im allgemeinen differenzieren lässt, welche Qualitätsmerkmale des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses bei sprachgestörten Kindern defizitär sind und wie sich die Entwicklungsdynamiken zwischen phonologischem Arbeitsgedächtnis und Wortschatz bei sprachgestörten und sprachlich unauffälligen Kindern gestalten. Um dies zu klären, wurde eine Längsschnittstudie realisiert, bei der 64 normalentwickelte und 33 sprachgestörte Kinder im Laufe des ersten und zweiten Grundschuljahres dreimal untersucht wurden; der zweite und dritte Meßzeitpunkt bildeten im wesentlichen die Grundlage der vorliegenden Arbeit. Es fanden sich starke empirische Argumente für die Position, dass Störungen im phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnis eine Hauptursache für die Sprachauffälligkeiten dysgrammatisch-sprachgestörter Kinder sind. Abweichend von den Ergebnissen bei sprachlich unauffälligen Kindern, zeigten die sprachgestörten Kinder geringere Leistungen in allen Bereichen, weniger und niedrigere Korrelationen, das phonologische Arbeitsgedächtnis ließ sich faktorenanalytisch von der phonologischen Bewusstheit und dem phonologischen Langzeitwissen klar trennen. Bei der Betrachtung der vier Merkmale des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses (Hasselhorn, Grube & Mähler, 2000) zeigte sich kein Einsatz der Rehearsalstrategie und eine geringere Geschwindigkeit (letzteres vielleicht auch der Ausdruck eingeschränkter Sprechmotorik, siehe Gathercole, Service et al., 1999). Es gab einen Gruppenunterschied bei der Variablen für die Qualität des phonetischen Speichers. Auch die zeitliche Dimension schien reduziert, die sprachgestörten Kinder zeigten bei langen Kunstwörtern einen größeren Leistungsabfall. Bei verrauscht dargebotenen Kunstwörtern ließ sich nach Ausschluss des Einflusses von Alter und Intelligenz kein Gruppenunterschied mehr nachweisen, der bei unverrauscht dargebotenen Kunstwörtern vorhanden war, so dass die Qualität des phonetischen Speichers eine wesentliche Rolle für die Sprachentwicklung zu spielen scheint. Bei den dysgrammatischen Kindern ließ sich weiterhin eine kausale Asymmerie zwischen phonologischem Arbeitsgedächtnis und Wortschatz finden, dergestalt, dass das frühere phonologische Arbeitsgedächtnis einen größeren Einfluss auf den späteren Wortschatz hatte, als umgekehrt. Diese wurde wegen des Entwicklungsrückstands der sprachgestörten Kinder in dieser Form erwartet, bei den sprachlich-unauffälligen Kindern ließ sich kein Zusammenhang zeigen. Die phonologische Bewusstheit zeigte keinen entwicklungsrelevanten Einfluss auf den Wortschatz. Zusammenfassend ist zu sagen, dass die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Studie die Hypothese stützen, dass die Ursache für kindliche Störungen des Spracherwerbs im phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnis und speziell in der Qualität des phonetischen Speichers zu suchen sind. Literatur Bowey, J. A. (1996). On the association between phonological memory and receptive vocabulary in five-year-olds. Journal of Experimantel Child Psychology, 63(1), 44-78. Bowey, J. A. (2001). Nonword repetition and young children`s receptive vocabulary: a longitudinal study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 441-469. Gathercole, S. E. & Baddeley, A. D. (1990a). Phonological memory deficits in language disordered children: Is there a cusal connection? Journal of Educational Psychology, 29, 336-360. Gathercole, S. E. & Baddeley, A. D. (1990b). The role of phonological memory in vocabulary acquisition: A study of young children learning new names. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 439-454. Gathercole, S. E. & Baddeley, A. D. (1993). Working memory and language. Hove, UK: Erlbaum. Gathercole, S. E., Service, E., Hitch, G.J., Adams, A.-M. & Martin, A. J. (1999). Phonological short-term memory and vocabulary development: Furter evidence on the nature of relationship. Applied cognitive psychology, 13, 65-77. Gathercole, S. E., Willis, C., Emslie, H., & Baddeley, A. D. (1992). Phonological memory and vocabulary development during the early school years: a longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 28, 887-898. Hasselhorn, M., Grube, D. & Mähler, C. (2000). Theoretisches Rahmenmodell für ein Diagnostikum zur differentiellen Funktionsanalyse des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses. In M. Hasselhorn, W. Schneider & H. Marx, Diagnostik von Lese-Rechtschreib-Schwierigkeiten, Tests und Trends, Bd. 1 (S.167-182). Hogrefe: Göttingen. Hasselhorn, M. & Werner, I. (2000). Zur Bedeutung des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses für die Sprachentwicklung. In H. Grimm (Hrsg.), Sprachentwicklung (Enzyklopädie der Psychologie, Themenbereich C: Theorie und Forschung, Serie III Sprache, Bd. 3) (S. 363-378). Göttingen: Hogrefe. Snowling, M., Chiat, S., & Hulme. C. (1991). Words, non-words, and phonological processes: Some comments on Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, and Baddeley. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12(3), 369-373.

Les enfants et adolescents dysphasiques présentent un trouble spécifique du langage qui se manifeste, en absence d'un déficit cognitif, sous la forme d'une perturbation profonde à l'oral et qui persiste au-delà de l'âge de 6 ans. Basée sur des éléments de psychologie pragmatique développementale (principe de coopération de Grice, 1979, et passage de la phase inter-psychologique à la phase intra-psychologique de Vygotski, 1997), et inspirée des travaux de Berman (2005), cette thèse défend l'idée que dans la dysphasie le langage n'est pas uniformément déficitaire. En d'autres termes, les performances langagières des enfants et des adolescents dysphasiques devraient varier en fonction de la situation de production dans laquelle ils se trouvent (tache standardisée vs. tache communicative), mais aussi en fonction de la modalité de production (oral vs. écrit), et enfin de l'indice linguistiques considéré (e.g. orthographe lexicale vs. orthographe morphologique). Les résultats obtenus montrent que les dysphasiques ont de meilleures performances langagières en situation de communication qu'en situation standardisée, que leurs performances en situation communicative sont meilleures à l'écrit qu'à l'oral, et enfin que le profil développemental de leurs capacités langagières évolue différemment, entre 7-11 ans et 12-18 ans, selon l'indice linguistique considéré. La psychologie pragmatique développementale permet donc de souligner que, dans le cadre de l'évaluation des capacités langagières des enfants et des adolescents dysphasiques, le choix des tâches influence les performances obtenues. De plus, comme le préconisait Ringard (2000), les enfants et adolescents dysphasiques bénéficient pleinement d'une scolarisation en milieu ordinaire et y progressent sur le long terme. / Children and adolescents with a specific language impairment (SLI) present a language disorder that appears in the absence of a cognitive impairment and persists beyond the age of 6. Based on elements of developmental pragmatics (Grice cooperative principle, 1979 and transition from the interpsychological to intrapsychological functioning, Vygotsky, 1997) and inspired by the work of Berman (2005), this thesis defends the idea that in SLI the language is not a uniform deficit. In other words, the language performances of children and adolescents with SLI should vary according to the situation in which they produce language (standardized test vs. communicative situation), but also according to the production modality (oral vs. written), and finally the linguistic measure considered (e.g. morphological spelling vs. lexical spelling). The results show that the participants with SLI perform better in a communicative than in a standardised test situation, and in written than in spoken language. Finally, their performance varies differently according to the measure considered, from 7 to 11 and 12 to 18. The developmental pragmatics framework chosen made it possible to emphasize that, when assessing language abilities in children and adolescents with SLI, the choice of a task affects the performance obtained. Moreover, as advocated by Ringard (2000), children and adolescents with SLI fully benefit from a mainstream school environment, where they can progress in the long term, up to the age of 18.

The diploma thesis is from the area of special pedagogy and speech therapy. It deals with the issue of parenthood of children with developmental dysphasia. The thesis is devided into two parts, the theoretical part and the empirical part. The thesis starts with characterisation of the family with disabilities and continues with further developmental dysphasia, its terminology, classification, etiology, symptomatology, diagnostics and therapy are characterized. The thesis defines the possibilities of speech therapy intervention in children with special impaired speech developmental dyspshasia. This main goal is achieved by research. This diploma thesis can be an inspiration for speech therapists and other professionals who work with families and their children with developmental dysphasia. It can also inspire students and other parents even whose child has been diagnosed with this disease. The thesis may be the starting point for further studies of a scientific character that focus on same subject.

<p>This work presents two studies of language processing and development in children. The first study focuses on passive sentence comprehension in 4-5-year-old children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and same-age peers with typical development (TD). We explore the effect of animacy, morphosyntactic, vocabulary, and event probability cues on children’s offline comprehension and online processing of passive sentences using an eye-tracked looking-while-listening design. The children were first exposed to short videos of agents doing characteristic actions (e.g., hard physical activities or passively observant activities). The children then engaged in an eye-tracked online processing task in which they heard reversible and nonreversible passive sentences describing events that matched or did not match the characteristics set up in the exposure videos. During these sentences, images on-screen were displayed that corresponded to the potential interpretations of the sentence. Online processing data was collected using eye tracking. After each sentence, the children were asked to point to the image corresponding to their interpretation to measure their offline comprehension. The offline comprehension data indicated that compared to the children with TD, the children with DLD were less likely to correctly interpret the passive sentences and made comprehension errors that suggested poorer attention to and integration of potentially informative sentence cues. The eye-tracked online processing data was examined in two ways. First, we analyzed the online processing data to determine to what extent the children’s processing was consistent with the use of the sentence cues. We found that the children in the two groups were just as likely to demonstrate looking patterns consistent with the use animacy cues but children with DLD were less likely to use morphosyntactic, vocabulary, and event probability cues. We then analyzed the online processing data in correctly interpreted sentences only to examine how the sentence cues were integrated over the course of the sentence. We found that in correctly interpreted sentences, children with DLD demonstrated a slower, less robust response to most of the informative cues in the sentences but quicker and less linguistically mediated use of event probability cues. Finally, we examined the relationship between the children’s use of event probability cues and their stimuli-specific vocabulary knowledge but found no strong associations. </p><p><br></p><p> The second study focuses on the semantic network structure of the vocabularies of young 18-30-month-old children and its influence on noun and verb learning. Prior work had examined how noun semantic network structure affects noun learning. Here, we extended that work to ask how noun and verb semantic network structures differ in their influence on noun and verb learning. We examined vocabulary network structure at the word, semantic neighborhood, and lexicon levels in a large sample of child vocabulary checklist data using semantic features. We analyzed the data in three ways. First, we charted the relationship between verb and noun semantic network structure and vocabulary size across children. We found that early-learned nouns tended to have strong network relationships with other nouns and other verbs across network levels. We also found that early-learned verbs tended to have strong network relationships with other nouns but, in contrast, were unlikely to have strong relationships with other verbs. Next, we examined patterns of normative vocabulary development, asking whether the cross-sectional patterns seen in the first analysis influenced the time at which nouns and verbs tended to be learned. We found similar patterns. Nouns with strong semantic connections to other nouns and other verbs tended to be learned early. Verbs with strong semantic connections to other nouns tended to be learned early but verbs with strong semantic connections to other verbs tended to be learned later. Finally, in an effort to determine how the very earliest vocabulary knowledge sets the stage for later word learning, we examined how word knowledge gaps formed and were filled by nouns and verbs in normative vocabulary development. These gaps corresponded to structured “cavities” in the semantic networks. We found that nouns tended to form semantic cavities that were later filled by nouns and verbs, reinforcing the findings from the first analyses that early noun knowledge is a prerequisite for later verb learning. </p>

The adoption of Health Information Systems (HIS) by primary care clinics and practitioners has become a standard in the healthcare industry. This increase in HIS utilization enables the informatization and automation of many paper-based clinical workflows, such as clinical referrals, through systems interoperability. The healthcare industry defines several interoperability standards and mechanisms to support the exchange of data among HIS. For example, the health authorities, Interior Health and Northern Health, created the CDX system to provide interoperability for HIS across British Columbia using SOAP Web Services and HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) interoperability standards. The CDX interoperability allows HIS such as Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems to exchange information with other HIS, such as patients clinical records, clinical notes and laboratory testing results. In addition, to ensure the EMR systems adhere to the CDX specification, these health authorities conduct conformance testing with the EMR vendors to certify the EMR systems. However, conformance testing can only cover a subset of the systems' specifications and a few use cases. Therefore, systems properties that are not closely associated with the systems (i.e. emergent properties) are hard, or even impractical, to assure using only conformance testing. System safety is one of these properties that are particularly significant for EMR systems because it deals with patient safety. A well-known approach for improving systems safety is through hazard analysis. For scenarios where the human factor is an essential part of the system, such as EMR systems, the System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is more appropriate than traditional hazard analysis techniques. In this work, we perform a hazard analysis using STPA on the CDX conformance profile in order to evaluate and improve the safety of the CDX system interoperability. In addition, we utilize and customize a tool named FASTEN to support and facilitate the analysis. To conclude, our analysis identified a number of new safety-related constraints and improved a few other already specified constraints. / Graduate

Today’s modern society is multicultural, school is therefore a meeting place for pupils withdifferent experiences, prior knowledge, and mother tongue. Second language students whohave not yet developed good skills in various subject languages, face several challenges inupper secondary school. To succeed in different school subjects these students need todevelop language that is specialized for each school subject. The purpose of this study is toexamine how social science teachers in the upper secondary school experience and work withsecond language students who have difficulties with content-based language. The appliedmethod in the study is qualitative interviews. The theoretical framework is based on differentconcepts of literacy to analyze the results. The results in this study show that the teachers useboth similar and different methods to develop second language students’ understanding ofconcepts, reading, and writing skills, subject language, and subject knowledge. However,several differences between teachers’ perceptions and approaches are also discerned. Theteachers in this study understand the importance of placing the language in focus within thesubject, however some of the teachers experience difficulties with integrating language andsubject into the teaching.