Title: “The letters jump”- to struggle with decoding and still understand what you are reading.Author: Maria EkUniversity of UmeåDepartment of EducationSupervisor: Asbjörg WestumExaminer: Fredrik KarlssonKeywords: Poor readers, Structured text talks, Reading strategies, Reading comprehension, Commitment and Motivation.During the past decades, Swedish studies show that reading comprehension and skills in reading strategies have decreased. In secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities there has been a focus on care-taking rather than on comprehension in general, and on reading comprehension in particular.The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Reciprocal Teaching would increase reading comprehension and motivation among upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities. The study presents how three 17-year-old pupils and their teacher, discussed expository fact texts during twelve lessons using the reciprocal method combined with power point-presentations to get the students to read more actively with interferences and reflections. The ambition was to make the structured text talks as interesting as possible with texts easy to read, technical aids, structure to make the students feel security when reading and to get committed pupils with an increased interest in reading.The results show an increase in motivation in reading, and the students were more prone to take an active part in discussions.

No description available.

Esta dissertação investiga o processo de conversão automática de textos estruturados para hiperdocumentos. Analisa vantagens e desvantagens da utilização de um processo automático. Faz um levantamento detalhado das etapas envolvidas nesta conversão. Como resultado da pesquisa propõe um processo de conversão baseado em definições formais da estrutura dos documentos e das citações. O domínio de aplicação do processo de conversão é o conjunto de normas estatutárias jurídicas brasileiras. Outro resultado deste trabalho é a ferramenta WebifyLaw que implementa o processo de conversão automática para o conjunto das normas estatutárias jurídicas brasileiras. Os resultados da aplicação da WebifyLaw na Constituição Federal, no Código Civil e no Código de Processo Civil e em outras 42 normas são apresentados e discutidos. / This work centered in the research of the automatic conversion of structured texts into hyperdocuments. It presents an analysis concerning the advantages and disadvantages of such automatic process. It also details the steps involved in this conversion. As one of the results it proposes an automatic conversion process, which is based on document structure and citations´ formal definitions. The application domain is set as Brazilian statutory norms. Another contribution from this work is a tool called WebifyLaw, which implements the automatic conversion process for the chosen domain. The tool was applied to the Brazilian Constitution, the Civil Code among other 42 norms. The results obtained in using this application are also presented and discussed.

This study focuses on inferential comprehension instruction in the classroom. The overall aim is to study the way in which four teachers are designing their lessons to develop their students’ ability to make inferences in literary text in the Swedish subject. The main focus is to explore what teaching modules may look like to promote students’ ability to make inferences (e.g. text choice, group size and method) and how the teachers motivate their didactic work. The study is also focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with inferential comprehension instruction. The methods used are qualitative studies using observations and interviews. The material consists of observation notes and interview recordings. The concept of inference and reading comprehension is consistent in the study and focuses on the importance of explicit instruction to improve the students’ inference comprehension. The models of inferential instruction are used to analyze the empirical material. The results show that teachers prefer to teach their students in groups of approximately 12 students, and they choose texts that are close to the students’ everyday life and in which a lot of inferences can be made. The majority of the teachers in the study demonstrate how they use the inference strategy by the method think aloud, to show their students examples of how to think and for them to use the strategy on their own eventually. All teachers remind the students of their own background knowledge, which is proven to increase the students’ ability to make inferences. This study shows that the possibilities with the teachers’ inference instruction lead to a deeper understanding among the students when reading. The challenges are lack of time when preparing, impatient students, and if the students do not activate the right background knowledge from the beginning, which will lead to misunderstandings while reading the text.

Esta dissertação investiga o processo de conversão automática de textos estruturados para hiperdocumentos. Analisa vantagens e desvantagens da utilização de um processo automático. Faz um levantamento detalhado das etapas envolvidas nesta conversão. Como resultado da pesquisa propõe um processo de conversão baseado em definições formais da estrutura dos documentos e das citações. O domínio de aplicação do processo de conversão é o conjunto de normas estatutárias jurídicas brasileiras. Outro resultado deste trabalho é a ferramenta WebifyLaw que implementa o processo de conversão automática para o conjunto das normas estatutárias jurídicas brasileiras. Os resultados da aplicação da WebifyLaw na Constituição Federal, no Código Civil e no Código de Processo Civil e em outras 42 normas são apresentados e discutidos. / This work centered in the research of the automatic conversion of structured texts into hyperdocuments. It presents an analysis concerning the advantages and disadvantages of such automatic process. It also details the steps involved in this conversion. As one of the results it proposes an automatic conversion process, which is based on document structure and citations´ formal definitions. The application domain is set as Brazilian statutory norms. Another contribution from this work is a tool called WebifyLaw, which implements the automatic conversion process for the chosen domain. The tool was applied to the Brazilian Constitution, the Civil Code among other 42 norms. The results obtained in using this application are also presented and discussed.

Control software plays an important role in industrial automation. Several domainspecific languages for control software implementation were designed and accepted in industry. Structured Text (ST)[1] is one of these languages. It is standardized by IEC 61131-3 standard and designed for programmable logic controllers. In this thesis two implementations of control software were developed: Java implementation as a reference model, and ST implementation as a test scenario for ST to C compiler. The functionality of both implementations was compared using the simulation model. It was concluded that resulting ST control software provides the same functionality as its reference model.

No description available.

This research explores the Automation Interface created by Beckhoff through introducinga compiler solution. Today machine builders have to be able to build machinesor plants in different sizes and provide many variations of the machine orplant types. Automatic code generation can be used in the aspect to reuse code thathas been tested and is configurable to match the desired functionality. Additionally,the use of a pre-existing API could potentially result in less engineering resourceswasted in developing automatic code generation. This thesis aims to evaluate theAutomation Interface (AI) tool created by Beckhoff. This is accomplished throughmeans of incorporating the API functions into a compiler solution. The solution isdesigned to export the information required through an XML-file to generate PLCapplications.The generated PLC-code will be in Structured Text. In order to createa functional PLC-application, the construction of software requirements and testcases are established. The solution is then validated by means of generating a dataloggerto illustrate the usage. The exploratory research revealed both the benefitsand cons of using AI to a compiler solution. The evaluation indicated that the AutomationInterface can reduce engineering effort to produce a compiler solution, butthe learning curve of understanding the underlying components that work with theAPI required a great deal of effort.

This paper reports work in progress on an experimental text editor called CREF, the Cross Referenced Editing Facility. CREF deals with chunks of text, called segments, which may have associated features such as keywords or various kinds of links to other segments. Text in CREF is organized into linear collections for normal browsing. The use of summary and cross-reference links in CREF allows the imposition of an auxiliary network structure upon the text which can be useful for "zooming in and out" or "non-local transitions." Although it was designed as a tool for use in complex protocol analysis by a "knowledge Engineer's Assistant," CREF has many interesting features which should make it suitable for a wide variety of applications, including browsing, program editing, document preparation, and mail reading.

International reading comprehension studies, like PIRLS and PISA, state that the reading comprehension of Swedish students has decreased significantly since 2000. As a consequence, the National Agency of Education has made reading comprehension teaching a prioritised field in terms of further education for teachers. There has also been a change in Lgr 11, the national curriculum for compulsory school, where it is stated that teaching in reading strategies shall be a part of the central content throughout compulsory school. When the pupils reach upper secondary school level, reading comprehension education is no longer a part of the curriculum. Today, students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities currently share the same curriculum as the ordinary upper secondary school. As from July 1st 2013, the new upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities will start, and the new curricula for each subject for these school forms will be in use (National Agency of Education). The Swedish Schools Inspectorate and several reports indicate that there are deficiencies concerning too low challenges on individual level in the teaching of Swedish at upper secondary level for students with learning disabilities. The teaching is predominantly on individual level, causing lack of interaction between students. One main school objective is to prepare these students for an active participation in society. It is vital that students receive instructions when reading, in order to increase their reading comprehension. The basis of the study is a research based teaching program for reading comprehension teaching, called Reciprocal teaching (Palinscar and Brown 1984). The program has been modified and modernised with the aid of interactive media and the computer program Power Point. The aim of the study is to examine whether the reading comprehension and the motivation for reading are affected by the teaching program Reciprocal teaching. Method: Three 17-year-old students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities have participated in the study for four weeks. During the study, the students' participation and commitment were observed. The reading comprehension was tested before and after taking part of the program. Result: According to tests, the ability to decode a text has increased for all the students, which is an important factor for understanding a text. The commitment and motivation have increased and the students state that reading and talking about texts together was good. Interactive media with graphical support combined with structured questions from the teacher contributed to the students' increased commitment.