This is a corpus-based study on adjective use in eighty written compositions by Swedish learners of English from Grade 7 and Grade 9 in junior high school, and from Year 1 and Year 3 in senior high school. The aims of the study are to conduct an analysis of the use of attributive adjectives in noun phrases, and to investigate how attributive adjective use contributes to the syntactic complexity of noun phrases. This study proposes a hypothesis of the complexity of noun phrases in relation to different types of attributive adjectives, that is to say, an assumption that more complex types of attributive adjectives contain more compact information that requires more effort to learn and use.  The investigation shows that Swedish learners of English in junior and senior high school use an overwhelming number of noun phrases without premodifiers. The findings confirm that less proficient students use more adjectives as premodifiers in noun phrases than nouns as premodifiers. The results of the examination also reveal that students from the four school levels investigated use the most common attributive adjectives frequently, which accouts for more than half of the attributive adjectives used. However, a positive trend is that the use of more complex types of adjectives, such as derivational and participial adjectives, steadily increases in number when students advance in school level.  The comparision of the most common attributive adjectives in proportion to other adjectives used in the data from each grade shows that more proficient students use a richer variety of adjectives than less proficient students. Some pedagogical implications in this connection are the need to raise Swedish students’ awareness of different types of adjectives in language teaching and learning. Other pedagogical suggestions are the need to develop students’ skills in elaborating ideas and consolidating syntactic structures in their writing.       Keywords: syntactic development, noun premodification, attributive adjective, Swedish learners of English

Today, English is a world language and more English accents have appeared. Today it is more difficult to teach English in Sweden due to the fact that we do not know when, where or how we are going to use English in the future. This study therefore focuses on how English teachers in Swedish upper secondary school teach and assess students’ accents and the challenge of working with the multitude of accents of the English-speaking world. This study is based on a questionnaire that was sent electronically to English teachers. The results from this study show that English teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools work with different English accents in class. The results also show that over fifty percent of the teachers do not let students choose accents for them to work with; most of the teachers’ choose which accents should be introduced and worked with in class. Moreover, students’ grades are not affected by the accent they speak, which is in line with the English syllabus. In conclusion, it is clear that British and American English are still dominant in Swedish school today. / Idag är engelska ett världsspråk och fler engelska dialekter har dykt upp. Idag har det blivit svårare att undervisa engelska i Sverige, då vi oftast inte vet när eller hur vi kommer använda det engelska språket i framtiden. Denna studie inriktar sig på hur engelskalärare i den svenska gymnasieskolan undervisar och bedömer elevers uttal, samt den utmaning som finns idag med att arbeta med de många dialekter som finns i den engelsktalande världen. Denna studie är baserad på en enkät som skickades elektroniskt till engelskalärare. Resultatet av denna studie visar att engelskalärare i svenska gymnasieskolan arbetar med olika engelska dialekter. Resultatet visar också att över femtio procent av lärarna inte låter eleverna välja själva vilka dialekter som ska introduceras, utan de flesta lärare väljer själva vilka engelska dialekter de ska arbeta med i undervisningen. Elevernas betyg är inte heller påverkade av deras val av engelsk dialekt, vilket är i linje med den engelska kursplanen. Slutligen visar det sig att brittisk och amerikansk engelska fortfarande dominerar i den svenska skolan idag.

This study investigated the morpheme acquisition order of Swedish students in grades 6 and 7, utilizing corpus texts drawn from the Uppsala Learner English Corpus (ULEC). It is an extension of Khor (2012) that focused on students in grades 9 and 12. Previous studies on morpheme acquisition order suggested that there was a natural sequence in acquiring morphemes, regardless of first language (L1). First language influence was said to be minimal or non-existing. Recently, studies have found evidence that L1 transfer is greater than first thought. This study examined three morphemes; articles, the preposition in, and plural form. The results showed that the errors that both groups made were consistent with the errors that were found in Khor (2012). The errors were of the same nature in all age groups, mainly in differences in (1) generic and specific usage of articles in Swedish and English, (2) the generic sense of regular plural nouns, (3) plural form of irregular nouns and nouns of Latin or Greek origin, (4) plural forms of countable and misuse of uncountable nouns, and (5) the usage of prepositions in Swedish and English. Current studies have also generated these results, which points towards strong L1 influence. The different usage and the errors suggest that the first language influence is stronger than first described, and consequently, that it influences the acquisition of morphemes. Therefore, the L1 seems to shape the order in which grammatical morphemes are acquired. Learners in one language group seem to learn the morphemes in a specific order, rather than a fixed universal order.

Over the last few decades, the interpersonal dimensions of academic writing have received growing attention in the field of applied linguistics. As an important concept in academic writing, engagement has been a topic of interest to reveal how writers interact with readers to, for example, guide reasoning through arguments and to abide by conventions of politeness. Previous research has suggested that the higher students’ academic level is, the more similar their use of engagement elements in writing will be. Previous research has also suggested that for non-native speakers, cultural factors as well as interlanguage, influence how engagement features are used in written English. The primary aim of this study was to investigate which engagement patterns could be found in L1 Swedish and L1 English students’ academic writing in English, with the focus on linguistics as a subject. Using the methods of corpus linguistics, this project also strove to identify the ways patterns of engagement differed between L1 Swedish and L1 English students, and in what ways patterns of engagement varied between the students at B-levels and C-levels in written English of linguistics studies. The data for the study came from SUSEC, which is a corpus of written English that consists of texts collected at Stockholm University in Sweden and at King’s College in England. In line with previous research, the results indicate that the L1 Swedish students use more elements of engagement than the L1 English students. Results also suggest that C-level students use fewer reader pronouns than B-level students, and that Swedish C-level students use more directives than Swedish B-level students. Overall, the comparison of students with two different first languages revealed several differences on how engagement is used, which can serve to inform future research on academic writing.

This study deals with the testing and grading of Swedish school leaving students’ oral proficiency in English, and with certain aspects of these students’ linguistic competence. The analyses and results are based on material drawn from an assessment project carried out at Gothenburg University in 1993. The 29 students taking part in the project were interviewed three times by three different interviewers in tests comprising three tasks, similar in structure but different in content. The interviewers were of three categories: school teachers of English, university teachers of English and native speakers of English. The student production was graded on a five-point scale according to a set of rating criteria. The interviewers assigned generally positive but often differing grades to the student performance. The grades were influenced by the students’ ability to communicate and speak with flow, and by gaps in vocabulary and by occurrences of grammatical errors. The students’ use of discourse phenomena and compensatory strategies was also of importance to the grades assigned. Many students were considered to have acceptable intonation and rhythm, but nevertheless an evident Swedish accent. The linguistic features studied comprised the verbal group, vocabulary, discourse markers and pronunciation. Differences could be observed between the members of the interviewer categories regarding the grades they assigned to student production. The school teachers seem to have paid special attention to grammatical accuracy, and the native speakers appear to have had a notion of communicative competence where accuracy plays a less important role. Differences in the grades assigned could also be explained by the order in which the interviews were made, by some students’ hesitant delivery, by the positive or negative effect of various fillers in the students’ speech, and by the interviewing methods used by the interviewers in the tests.

<p>This study deals with the testing and grading of Swedish school leaving students’ oral proficiency in English, and with certain aspects of these students’ linguistic competence. The analyses and results are based on material drawn from an assessment project carried out at Gothenburg University in 1993.</p><p>The 29 students taking part in the project were interviewed three times by three different interviewers in tests comprising three tasks, similar in structure but different in content. The interviewers were of three categories: school teachers of English, university teachers of English and native speakers of English. The student production was graded on a five-point scale according to a set of rating criteria.</p><p>The interviewers assigned generally positive but often differing grades to the student performance. The grades were influenced by the students’ ability to communicate and speak with flow, and by gaps in vocabulary and by occurrences of grammatical errors. The students’ use of discourse phenomena and compensatory strategies was also of importance to the grades assigned. Many students were considered to have acceptable intonation and rhythm, but nevertheless an evident Swedish accent. The linguistic features studied comprised the verbal group, vocabulary, discourse markers and pronunciation. </p><p>Differences could be observed between the members of the interviewer categories regarding the grades they assigned to student production. The school teachers seem to have paid special attention to grammatical accuracy, and the native speakers appear to have had a notion of communicative competence where accuracy plays a less important role.</p><p>Differences in the grades assigned could also be explained by the order in which the interviews were made, by some students’ hesitant delivery, by the positive or negative effect of various fillers in the students’ speech, and by the interviewing methods used by the interviewers in the tests.</p>

The main aim of this paper has been to examine if Swedish students at upper secondary school were able to use the morphemes The progressive –ing, The irregular past and The irregular third person. In addition, it has also addressed if the students examined in this essay were able to use some morphemes better than others. In addition, it concluded if the results found in this paper were in accordance with what other researchers have concluded. The paper is based on essays written by students at upper secondary school that can be found in The Uppsala Learner English Corpus, as well as essays written for the national test by students studying English 6. In the course of the study, it was vital to explain what the natural order actually is as well as what researchers who believe in it claim and what researchers who do not believe in it claim. Consequently, it becomes important to clarify the differences between a cross-sectional study and a longitudinal study. When analysing the essays the program Antconc was used. It is a free corpus analysis program that allows researchers to study several texts at once. Next, to determine if the students had acquired the morphemes, all obligatory contexts where the morphemes should be used were analysed manually. What can be concluded from this paper is that the three morphemes have not been acquired by the students who were examined in this paper. Students could use some forms of the morphemes; however, even in those cases the correct usage in percentage of the morpheme were often not above 85%. These results were quite like the ones found in studies conducted on students at secondary school; this indicates that students at both secondary and upper secondary school do not actually acquire these morphemes fully. What they do acquire are different forms of a specific morpheme that they probably use quite a lot in their writing. / Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka om svenska elever som studerar på gymnasieskolan kunde aktivt använda de engelska morfemen The progressive –ing, The irregular past och The irregular third person. Dessutom har uppsatsen också behandlat om det fanns morfemen som eleverna kunde använda sig bättre av. Den har även jämfört sitt resultat med vad andra forskare har hittat. Uppsatsen är bygd på essäer skrivna av elever på gymnasieskolan som finns att hämta i The Uppsala Learner English Corpus. Dessutom använder den sig av essäer skrivna av elever för det nationella provet i engelska 6. Under studiens gång var det viktigt att förklara vad The natural order är liksom vad forskare säger gällande denna teori. Följaktligen blir det viktigt att klargöra skillnaden mellan en tvärsnittsstudie och en longitudinell studie. Vid analysen av essäerna användes programmet Antconc. Det är ett gratis korpusanalysprogram som tillåter forskare att studera flera texter samtidigt. För att klargöra om eleverna hade förvärvat morfemen var det därefter viktigt att studera alla obligatoriska sammanhang där morfemen måste användas, vilket gjordes manuellt. Det som framgår är att eleverna som granskades i studien inte har förvärvat de tre morfemen. Eleverna kunde använda sig av vissa former av varje morfem, men även i dessa fall var den korrekta användningen i procent oftast inte mer än 85%. Detta resultat var ganska likt de studier som har granskat elever i högstadiet, vilket tyder på att elever i både högstadiet och gymnasiet inte förvärvar dessa morfem fullt ut. I de flesta fall kunde eleverna enbart använda olika former av morfemen.

In classrooms all over the world, there are students who fear the attention of both teachers and peers alike. Anxiety is a cause for such fears and in foreign language classrooms it can be prevalent. Foreign language anxiety (FLA) is a concept developed by Horwitz et al (1986) to describe the unique anxiety that arises in a foreign language learning situation. Anxious students are less prone to use their target language and feel less motivated in their language studies, both of which have a negative effect on their learning. The aim of this study was to measure and compare anxiety levels among Swedish lower and upper secondary school students, identify major sources of anxiety and gain understanding of individuals’ perception of foreign language anxiety. 49 subjects from two classes participated in the study. Their anxiety was measured with the foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al (1986). Interviews were used to gain insight into the subjects’ perception of foreign language anxiety. The results showed that a majority of the subjects were anxious and that students in the lower secondary school class were more anxious than the upper secondary school class. The identified major sources of anxiety were teacher-induced anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and general anxiety. / I klassrum över hela världen finns det elever som är rädda för både lärarens och sina klasskamraters uppmärksamhet. Nervositet är en orsak till en sådan rädsla och kan vara vanligt i främmandespråkklassrum. Språkängslan inför främmande språk är ett begrepp utvecklat av Horwitz m. fl. (1986) för att beskriva den unika nervositet som uppstår vid lärande av främmande språk. Nervösa elever är mindre benägna att använda språket de lär sig och känner sig mindre motiverade att lära sig och båda sakerna har en negativ effekt på deras inlärning. Syftet med studien var att mäta och jämföra nervositetsnivåer bland svenska högstadie- och gymnasieelever, identifiera de största källorna till nervositet och få förståelse för elevers uppfattning av nervositet. 49 elever från två klasser deltog i studien. Deras nervositet mättes med skalan för språknervositet i samband med undervisning i främmande språk, utvecklad av Horwitz m fl (1986). Intervjuer användes för att få insikt i deltagarnas uppfattning om språknervositet inför främmande språk. Resultatet visade att en majoritet av deltagarna led av språknervositet och att högstadieeleverna i högre grad var nervösa än gymnasieeleverna. De största källorna till nervositet som identifierades var lärarorsakad nervositet, rädsla för negativt omdöme och generell nervositet.

The purpose of this study has been to examine how Swedish teachers of English encourage the development of students’ oral proficiency in the English language. By interviewing six Swedish teachers of English at upper secondary school, the study addresses which methods are mostly used by the teachers in order to encourage the improvement of students’ oral proficiency. The results of the study indicate that all the teachers tried in different manners to encourage students’ self-confidence, which would help them develop their oral proficiency. Furthermore, it was possible to conclude that the teachers shared the notion that insecurity is detrimental to the development of students’ oral proficiency. Another method that was used by the teachers was allowing students to work in either pair or groups. Even though most teachers used this method, they did point out different things that were important to think about in terms of group work. For the teachers, it was important that the students had fun during oral exercises, and thus, most teachers used different games when conducting oral activities in order to inspire a more relaxed or comfortable environment. The last concept that the teachers talked about was the usage of the target language in the classroom. Here the teachers’ ideas were not in alignment with each other. Some thought that it was good to force the students to use the target language throughout the lessons when communicating, whereas others only believed that students had to communicate orally in the target language during speaking activities. If students were insecure, it did not, according to these teachers, help the students to force them to speak English throughout the lessons. Most of the concepts that were introduced by the teachers were similar to those found in previous studies on Swedish teachers of English. Furthermore, the results of this paper could also be tied to previous research concerning oral development for L2 learners. / Syftet med denna studie har varit att studera hur svenska engelskalärare främjar utvecklingen av elevers muntliga färdigheter i engelska. Genom att intervjua sex svenska engelskalärare på gymnasieskolan undersöker studien vilka metoder som används mest av lärarna för att utveckla elevernas muntliga färdigheter. Resultaten av studien visar att de flesta lärare som intervjuades på olika sätt uppmuntrar elevernas självförtroende, vilket i sin tur hjälper dem att utveckla deras muntliga färdighet. Tanken om att osäkerhet är skadligt för elevers utveckling av muntlig färdighet delades av alla lärare som intervjuades. En annan metod som användes av lärarna var att tillåta elever att arbeta i par eller grupper. Även om de flesta lärare använde den här metoden pekade de på olika saker som var viktiga att tänka på när det gällde grupp- och pararbeten. Nästa metod som lärarna använde berörde inspirerandet av en mer avslappnad eller bekväm miljö som möjliggör utvecklingen av elevers muntliga färdigheter. För lärarna var det viktigt att eleverna hade kul under muntliga övningar, och sålunda använde de flesta lärare olika spel när de utförde muntliga aktiviteter. Det sista konceptet som lärarna talade om var användningen av målspråket i klassrummet. Här var lärarens idéer inte i linje med varandra. Vissa trodde att det var bra att tvinga eleverna att använda målspråket under hela lektionen medan andra inte trodde det hjälpte elevernas utveckling av sitt muntliga språk. Om en student var osäker, hjälpte det inte, enligt dessa lärare, att tvinga studenten att tala engelska under lektionerna. De påpekade dock att eleverna var tvungna att under talaktiviteter och muntliga presentationer interagera på målspråket. De flesta av de koncept som lärarna introducerade liknade dem som hittades i tidigare studier om svenska engelskalärare. Dessutom kan resultaten av denna uppsats kopplas till tidigare forskning kring oral development for L2 learners.

The ways in which someone’s first language (L1) influences his or her second language (L2) to create errors, that is negative transfer, is a topic that has received much attention in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Previous research has suggested that negative transfer is responsible for many errors. The primary aim of this study is to investigate article and preposition errors in the production of Swedish learners of English and to discuss these errors in relation to negative transfer. The secondary aim is to compare transfer errors by L1 Swedish and L1 Portuguese learners of English.   The first and main part of the study is a corpus investigation of the written production of 80 students in upper secondary school (high school). The second part is a multiple-choice test constructed to provoke transfer errors. It was distributed to students in upper secondary school in Sweden and in Brazil. The results from the corpus analysis are largely in line with those of previous research, for example with regards to how definite article errors are more common than indefinite article errors, and how contexts with definite articles and generic noun phrases seem prone to create transfer errors. The corpus study also shows that substitution was the most common preposition error and that many transfer preposition errors supposedly were caused by direct translations. Through the multiple-choice test, the degree to which the first language had an impact on individual errors could be revealed. All in all, the study reveals several aspects of negative transfer that perhaps a single-language investigation could not, because it is in the comparison of English-learners with different L1s that the most interesting results occur. / De sätt som någons första språk påverkar hans eller hennes andra språk så att fel uppstår, det vill säga negativ språköverföring (negative transfer), är ett ämne som har fått mycket uppmärksamhet inom forskning kring språkinlärning. Tidigare studier har visat på hur negativ språköverföring orsakar många fel. Det primära syftet i denna uppsats är att undersöka artikel- och prepositionsfel i skrift hos svenska elever som lär sig engelska och att diskutera dessa fel i relation till negativ språköverföring. Det sekundära målet är att jämföra hur negativ språköverföring yttrar sig hos svenska och portugisiska elever som lär sig engelska. Den första delen av denna uppsats, som även är huvuddelen, är en korpusundersökning av 80 uppsatser skrivna av högstadieelever. Den andra delen är ett flervalstest som konstruerats för att provocera fram språköverföringsfel. Deltagarna var högstadie- och gymnasieelever från Sverige och Brasilien. Resultaten från korpusundersökningen stämmer i stor utsträckning överens med vad tidigare forskning visat, till exempel att det är vanligare att fel uppstår med bestämda artiklar än med obestämda artiklar och hur bestämda artiklar och tillsammans med generiska nominalfraser tenderar att generera negativ språköverföring. Korpusstudien visar också på hur felaktigt utbyte (substitution) var det vanligaste prepositionsfelet och att många språköverföringsfel förmodligen orsakats av direkta översättningar från svenska. I analysen av resultateten från flervalstestet kunde graden av inflytande från första språket på enskilda fel påvisas. Sammantaget avslöjar undersökningen i denna uppsats på flera aspekter av negativ språköverföring som troligen ej uppenbarats om enkom elever med ett förstaspråk inkluderats, detta eftersom det är i jämförelsen mellan engelska-elever med olika förstaspråk som de mest intressanta resultaten framkommer.