Magister Educationis - MEd / South Africa in the past-apartheid era has undergone a series of curriculum changes that collectively have not yet yielded the desired results. Evidence of this is to be found in the continued low pass rates and poor performance in the annual National Senior Certificate (Grade 12) examinations, including the subject English as a First Additional Language (EFAL). Apart from language policy considerations, reasons related to the teaching approach used in EFAL may have a bearing on the results.The Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) recommends the use of a text-(genre) approach, alongside a communicative approach, to the teaching of languages in schools to replace the old content-based methods with their aims and objectives. While the old curriculum did advocate communicative language teaching, the addition is a text-based approach. This study focuses on investigating the various approaches teachers employ in the teaching of English writing and specifically seeks to identify the extent to which a text-based approach is realized in the teaching of EFAL in Grade 9 in two schools in the Western Cape. The study does so, amongst other ways, by analysing the various texts learners are exposed to in English lessons and taking note of how teachers introduce and negotiate the different stages of writing. This study uses genre theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in combination with social constructivist approaches to language learning. This theory is based on the premise that language is functional and cannot be detached from the social context of the learner.A qualitative research paradigm is used and the study is underpinned by interpretive theory.According to Richards (2003), qualitative research is the study of human action in its natural setting in the context of people’s daily lives. In this case the school classroom has to function as the natural setting. The qualitative data collection instruments for this study include interviews,(particularly open-ended interviews), classroom observation schedules and audio recordings. The teaching processes in the classroom and interview sessions are recorded.The research participants for this study were two qualified English teachers. Secondly, samples of notebooks including class exercises of a selected numbers of learners of English Language in Grade 9 were collected for analysis with regard to the implementation of a text-based approach.The findings revolve round the themes derived from the analysis chapter, and are expected to provide ways of promoting the teaching of English using this approach. They reveal that the teachers in this study do not have sufficient understanding of the theories that underpin the teaching of writing in the English FAL curriculum. They attend to the use of text-based approach superficially but they apply other teaching strategies in their lessons during the teaching of English as a first additional language. The study concludes by summing up the main findings,and by spelling out some implications for further research.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Working with Arab students pursuing a degree in English Language and Translation at the Taiz University, Republic of Yemen, has brought to the researcher‟s attention a number of errors or problems encountered in Arabic to English translation. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered by student translators (STs), novice translators (NTs) as well as more experienced translators (Ts) while translating from Arabic into English. The study starts with the assumption that Arabic and English belong to different families of languages and thus there is rarely a word-for-word equivalence in both languages. The present study is cross-sectional in nature. It is based on empirical data collected from several categories of translators. In other words, the data was collected from fourth-year students in the department of English and Translation in the Faculty of Arts, Taiz University, as well as five NTs who have previously graduated from this department and are currently working in a number of accredited translation offices in Taiz. The study also investigates the challenges faced by Ts. For this purpose, a novel, a tourist brochure, an editorial, and three academic abstracts all translated by established publishing houses and translation centres in and outside Yemen are examined. These texts are analyzed to determine to what extent the problems faced by STs and NTs reoccur in published translations produced by Ts. For its conceptual framework, the study adopts an eclectic approach that does not stick rigidly to a particular paradigm but rather draws upon multiple linguistic and translation theories. However, it is mainly based on Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and the problems have been classified along his taxonomy of meaning metafunctions into ideational, interpersonal and textual. Extra-textual problems are also analyzed. Several SFG-based translation models such as Hatim and Mason‟s (1990) sociometic model, House‟s (1977, 1997) translation quality assessment model, Hervey et al. (1992) register analysis model and Baker‟s (1990) equivalence model are also employed in the study to help the researcher examine the problems encountered in Arabic-English translation within those four categories. In addition, Nord‟s functional model to translation which is based on Skopos theory is also taken into consideration although to a minimum extent. In addition to the analysis of translations produced by various categories of translators, the study uses several triangulation research tools such as questionnaire, Thinking Aloud Protocols (TAPs), retrospective interviews, and classroom observation. These tools are employed to assist the researcher to identify the possible causes for the problems the STs, NTs, and Ts experience from the perspective of the participants themselves. The current translation programme at Taiz University is also analyzed to determine to what extent it contributes to the poor performance of the student translators and would-be translators. The study concludes that STs, NTs and even Ts encounter several problems at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels. They also encounter problems at the extra-textual stratum. The study attributes these problems to structural and cultural differences between the two languages, the reliance on the dictionary rather than the meaning in use of lexical items, the differences in the cohesion and coherence systems of Arabic and English, the negligence of the role of context in translation as well as unfamiliarity with text-typologies and genre conventions. In other words, participants follow a bottom-up approach in translation and come close to the source text translating it literally. This approach is very damaging because it ignores the fact that the three metafunctions might be realized differently in the two languages. Furthermore, the study concludes that the manner in which translation is taught at Taiz University as well as the syllabus contribute mainly to the lack of translation competence of the student translators and would-be translators. The programme is inadequate and it needs urgent review and improvements. The present syllabus does not keep abreast with the latest theoretical and practical developments in the discipline of translation as well as neighbouring disciplines such as contrastive linguistics, text-analysis, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and the like. As for methodology, the study concludes that it is the transmissionist (teacher-centred) teaching approach rather than the transformational (learner-centred) which is commonly used in teaching translation. As a result, the read-and-translate approach dominates the scene and no tasks, activities, or projects are given to the STs. The study provides some recommendations, which if implemented, can be useful in enabling Yemeni and Arab universities to improve the competence among student translators in order to improve translation teaching at academic level. A major contribution of this study is the description and classification of translation problems in Arabic-English translation on the basis of meaning systems. Unlike traditional descriptive error analysis, which is widely used to analyze the translation product, SFG-based text analysis provides a systematic description of translation problems which allows a precise articulation of the nature of problems that would otherwise be explained simply as translations which “sound unnatural or awkward” (Kim 2008; Yallop 1999). As far as the researcher knows, no study in the Arab world has yet tackled translation problems from this perspective. Other studies have tackled deviated forms produced by students or translators using an error analysis technique rather than a holistic approach based on solid theoretical knowledge. In other words, while most other studies focused on specific „errors‟ and error analysis and ended at that, the present study does not only looks at „errors‟ as „difference‟ (from contrastive analysis) but rather from several perspectives. It is also more comprehensive by triangulating several sources of data and pooling them together for a more informed understanding.

In previous linguistic research, it has been found that there is an indirect relationship between gender and language usage. It has also been found that men and women use language in a distinctive way in their work role. There is a lot of research, both in the gender sciences but also in the linguistics, which has examined the difference in how men and women express themselves in writing. How the difference between the sexes can also be seen from a writing perspective is something that interests me and so in my study I chose to look at how men and women express themselves and portray themselves in personal letters. It is an area that interests me and looking at personal letters to job ads is something that there is not so much previous science around and I believe that more science in this specific area may be supportive in recruitment in the labor market in the future. The aim of my study is to see if there are differences in how men and women portray their characteristics in personal letters. My study is based on the following questions: Are person´s characteristics portrayed in personal letters by means of material or relational processes depending on gender? How do men and women portray their characteristics in personal letters versus the job advert´s qualifications? With the help of SFG and Impression Management I got answers to my questions. My study links to theories around SFG where the focus is mainly on processes. The study also links to Impression Management and Hirdman´s (1998) theory of the gender system. The results of my study show that there are differences between how men and women express themselves in writing. Women often produce their characteristics through relational processes and thus identify themselves with their characteristics. Men have a tendency to express their characteristics through material processes, which means that they identify themselves through actions. In contrast, my results do not support previous research that says that women appear more sensitive and vague while men appear more powerful. My results also show that women express more characteristics than men who are also linked to the job advertisement qualifications.

Skrivundervisning med stöd av genrepedagogik har sedan några år tillbaka bedrivits i flera svenska skolor. Pedagogiken vilar på sociokulturell teoribildning där stöttning och samarbete är centralt. Syftet med denna intervjustudie är att bidra till kunskap om hur verksamma lärare i årskurserna 1–6 upplever arbetet med genrepedagogik. I studien besvaras följande tre frågeställningar: hur arbetar lärarna med genrepedagogik, hur ser låg- och mellanstadielärare på arbetet med genrepedagogik och vilka effekter upplever lärarna att genrepedagogiken ger? Materialet till studien består av fem lärares intervjusvar. Intervjuerna har dels analyserats med hjälp av en innehållsanalysdär svaren har tematiserats utifrån studiens frågeställningar, dels analyserats utifrån de två sociokulturella begrepp som genrepedagogiken utgår från: stöttning och samarbete.  Innehållsanalysen visar att lärarna använder cirkelmodellen som en grund i skrivprocessen när de lär ut en ny genre samt att de använder både systemisk-funktionell grammatik och traditionell grammatik i sin undervisning. De effekter av genrepedagogik som lärarna upplever är genomgående positiva och beskrivs som att eleverna utvecklas i sitt språk och får verktyg som de kan använda i skrivandet. Några lärare lyfter dock negativa aspekter från sina erfarenheter att arbeta genrepedagogiskt som att det tar lång tid och att det fria skrivandet hämmas. Resultatet från analysen som är gjord med stöd av begreppen från den sociokulturella teorin visar att lärarna stöttar sina elever genom checklistor, stödstrukturer och ämnesspecifika begrepp samt genom samarbete. Lärarna beskriver att de upplever att ett genrepedagogiskt arbetssätt skapar tillfällen för elever att samarbeta.

This study examines the female protagonist Petra von Pahlen in Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s novel Den blå rullgardinen (The blue blind). The aim of the study is to make a stylistic examination of narrative perspective, relations, and agency in several text passages from the novel, to find out how the language of the text shapes Petra von Pahlen as a female character. To see whether the linguistic choices and functions of the text form Petra as an active or passive person, her relation to four other characters in the novel are examined. The material consists of 39 passages of text taken from 10 chapters of the novel, all of which dealing specifically with Petra’s part of the story. Literary theories used for the study are narratology and systemic-functional grammar. The applied methods for analysing the passages are a selection of syntactic and semantic markers compiled by Staffan Hellberg (1985) for stylistic analysis of narrative perspective in Swedish literary texts, and a selection of the tools for investigation of transitivity and ergativity in texts available through the systemic-functional theory of grammar by Michael Halliday (2014). The results show that the narrative perspective used in the text passages are mostly internal focalization, and that the most frequently used stylistic markers are expressions for perception and reflection, similes, metaphors, and words expressing value. The results also show that Petra is most frequently realized through the participant roles of Senser in mental processes, and Goal in material processes. In the ergative analysis Petra is most frequently realized in non-ergative clauses through the participant role as Medium, both in terms of first and second participant; she is seldom realized as Agent. From the quantitative results of the study, Petra can be viewed as a passive character, however an argumentation based on previous research from the fields of literary science and feminist literary stylistics also suggests an interpretation, where the context and themes in the novel, together with an awareness of the different ‘meanings’ of linguistic features, provide a less powerless position for Petra.

This thesis presents a case study from an authentic school practice, where seven students, in their second year of a social sciences program in an upper sec­on­dary school, use internet texts in various learning situations. The aim of the study is to map the reading practices of students encountering internet texts. The main data con­sists of obser­vations, audio and screen recordings, writ­ten instruc­tions, and screen ­shots of the sites visited. Reading practices are ana­lysed, draw­ing on concepts from New Literacy Studies and Systemic Func­tional Grammar, inclu­ding literacy events, literacy in terms of text cul­ture, text­ual norms, abstraction, auth­o­rity and mod­ality as a scale of reliability. The results reveal that meaning making resources such as colours, amount of writing and images and choice of fonts all seem to be parts of students’ con­ceptions of reliability. These textual norms result in learning situations in which students search for texts with pre­dominantly dense writing promoting ency­clopaedic know­ledge. These highly auth­orit­ative texts can be hard to under­stand for the students, something that the text analyses indicate. In com­parison to text books, the internet texts used show, a higher level of auth­ority and abs­trac­tion, rein­forced by gram­matical meta­phors. Most situ­ations in the study include peer interaction, but the most obvious learning poten­­tial resides in situations with a clear reading goal, where stu­dents work in groups and where negotiation is part of the meaning mak­ing pro­cess. The pedagogical implications of the study suggest the potential for students to achieve a higher degree of understanding of the encountered inter­net texts, through group work, and discussions concerning the impact of different layouts and the demands of verbal language. Another potential con­cerns methods for avoiding critical literacy being reduced to trivial visual scanning, via dis­cussions focusing on criteria for reliability evaluations. It is suggested that increased teacher awareness concerning the types of internet texts the students will encounter in authentic situations may contribute to students’ field and genre insight.

Recent international surveys reveal a decline in reading performance among Swedish students during the past decade. In the light of these results, this thesis describes the reading literacy of a class of high-performing students in the Swedish upper secondary school, in order to discern characteristics of successful readers. More specifically, the aim is to describe these students’ reading literacy in terms of their reading habits, approaches to texts, reading strategies, as well as reading positions. The study is framed within a socio-cultural perspective and is based on qualitative methods such as case studies, classroom observations and a group discussion, in combination with a partly quantitative survey. A methodological contribution to the research field is the attempt to develop a method for analyzing students’ reading positions, mainly based on the concept of text movability, as used by af Geijerstam, Liberg et al. The results reveal a deep reading position towards non-fiction texts among a majority of these high-performing students. In comparison with students who adopt a surface-oriented position, these students tend to show greater textual awareness and interactive text movability, and seem to use a wider repertoire of reading strategies in order to attain reading success. This study identifies the most prominent features of high-performing students as their textual awareness, i.e. an ability to comment on content, form, function and potential readers of texts, genre awareness, i.e. an ability to identify various text genres, and metacognitive awareness, i.e. knowing what strategies to use and when to use them. These features can be related to the students’ descriptions of their reading habits which imply that they read a great variety of texts, including both fiction and non-fiction. Most of these students report that they read daily and of their own accord. Having broad textual experience helps when it comes to reading texts in specialized domains that require inferencing and/or field knowledge. There also appears to be a match between the literacy supported in school and the literacy sustained in the students’ home environment. The pedagogical implications are the need for continuous work with students’ reading development and reading strategies, making students aware of different text genres and their specific features, and the importance for students to be challenged in their reading, but naturally in combination with appropriate scaffolding methods.

Denna uppsats syftar till att synliggöra och diskutera hur klimatförändringar beskrivs i läromedel ämnade för grundskolan i ämnet geografi. Studiens teoretiska och metodologiska utgångspunkt är systemisk-funktionell grammatik, med fokus på den ideationella grammatiken. Det analyserade materialet utgörs av tre läromedelstexter, avsedda för årskurserna 4-6, 7 och 8. Genom en transitivitetsanalys visar studien att mänskliga förstadeltagare sällan förekommer i materialet. En analys av texternas ergativitet visar att förhållandevis få satser är ergativa, vilket innebär att majoriteten av processerna beskrivs som händelser, snarare än handlingar. Resultatet av ergativitetsanalysen visar vidare att agenter realiseras genom nominaliseringar eller andra abstrakta fenomen. Människans roll i klimatförändringar sätts således i periferin.

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Syftet med studien är att belysa de medel som författare av journalistisk text använder för att förmedla attityd, förhandla argumenterbarheten för sina åsikter och förhålla sig till andra(s) externa positioner och åsikter. Den teoretiska basen utgörs av appraisalteorin (Martin och White 2005) och den interpersonella metafunktionen i den systemisk funktionella grammatiken (Halliday 2014). Det analyserade materialet baserar sig på ett urval av artiklar i den ungerska regeringsvänliga veckotidskriften Figyelő publicerade under perioden november 2017 till augusti 2018, vilka samtliga tematiskt behandlar utvecklingen i Sverige med avseende på migration. Resultatet visar på en mycket rik och varierad användning av den språkliga repertoaren för att uttrycka attityd, och på en övervägande subjektiv ton i rapporteringen. En stor andel implicit uttryckt attityd liksom ironi och ett framträdande författar-jag vittnar om en medveten ambition att interpersonellt närma sig läsarna. Materialet visar även på en systematisk undanträngning av alternativa ståndpunkter (kontraherande heteroglossi), bland annat genom förstärkning av egna argument och åsikter eller genom ett förringande av andras. Resultatet gör det motiverat att ställa frågan om det finns en ”Populist Stance” som kan inordnas som en utmärkande journalistisk stil under det som appraisalteorin benämns commentator voice, utifrån det narrativ som förmedlas, och vars utmärkande drag skulle vara just rika språkliga uttryck för närhet till läsarna, omfattande förekomster av värderande uttalanden om personer/grupper, och en systematisk begränsning av utrymmet för alternativa ståndpunkter. Erfarenheterna från att använda appraisalteorin i detta arbete visar att en större, fördjupad och jämförande studie på detta område torde vara meningsfull och möjlig, utifrån en kombinerad kvantitativ/kvalitativ ansats. / Jelen tanulmány célja annak megismerése, hogy az újságírói szövegek írói milyen nyelvi eszközöket használnak fel az adott témához való hozzáállásuk kifejezésére, és hogyan érvelnek véleményük érvelhetőségét mellett, valamint hogyan kapcsolódnak más külső álláspontokhoz és véleményekhez. Az elméleti kiinduló pont az „Appraisal”-elmélet (Martin és White 2005) és az interperszonális meta-funkció a szisztémás funkcionális nyelvtanban (Halliday 2014). Az elemzett korpusz a Figyelő – egy a magyar kormányt támogató heti magazin – 2017 novembere és 2018 augusztusa között megjelent cikkeiből készített saját válogatáson alapul, ahol a cikkek témájukat tekintve a migrációval kapcsolatos svédországi fejleményekkel foglalkoznak. A tanulmány eredményei azt mutatják, hogy a szövegekben a szerzők nagyon gazdag és változatos nyelvi repertoárt használnak fel a hozzáállás kifejezésére, és hogy a szövegek túlnyomórészt szubjektív módon ábrázolják a helyzetet Svédországban. A szerzői hozzáállásnak a sok egyenesen ki nem mondott megnyilvánulása, a sok irónia, valamint a szerző személyének kiemelkedő pozíciója mind arról tanúskodik, hogy tudatos törekvés van arra, hogy interperszonálisan közeledjenek az olvasókhoz. Az anyag azt is megmutatja, hogy szisztematikusan kizárják az alternatív véleményeket (kirekesztő heteroglosszia), többek között azzal, hogy megerősítik a saját érveiket és véleményüket, vagy lekicsinyilik a többiekét. A tanulmány eredményei alapján indokoltan merül fel a kérdés, hogy létezik-e egyfajta „populista hozzáállás” (angol „populist stance”), amelyet jellegzetes újságírói stílusnak lehet tekinteni, és amely besorolható az ”Appraisal”-elmélet által ”Commentator Voice”-nak nevezett jelenség alá. Ezt igazolhatják a szövegek narratívái és megkülönböztető tulajdonságai: az olvasókhoz való közelség/közeledés gazdag nyelvi megnyilvánulásai, a sok egyénekre/csoportokra vonatkozó értékelő kijelentés és az alternatív pozíciók lehetőségeinek szisztematikus korlátozása. Az Appraisal-modell alkalmazásával kapcsolatos tapasztalatok azt mutatják, hogy lehetséges és fontos lenne egy ezen a területen végzett mélyreható, szisztematikus és összehasonlító tanulmány, egy kombinált kvalitatív és kvantitatív kutatási módszer alapján. / The aim of the study is to investigate the means by which authors of journalistic text convey attitude, negotiate the arguability of their opinions and position themselves in relation to external positions and the views of others. The theoretical basis of the study is Appraisal Theory (Martin &h White 2005) and the Interpersonal Metafunction of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday 2014). The analysed material is based on a selection of articles in the Hungarian government-friendly weekly magazine Figyelő, published between November 2017 and August 2018, all of which thematically deal with developments in Sweden with regard to migration. The results of the study show a rich and varied use of the linguistic repertoire for expressing attitude, and a predominantly subjective writer voice. Frequent examples of implicitly expressed attitude and irony as well as the appearance of the author as subject in the text give witness to a conscious ambition to approach readers interpersonally. The material also shows a systematic exclusion of alternative positions (contracting heteroglossia), whereby the author strengthens his/her own arguments and opinions and/or belittles those of others. The results give cause for asking whether there is a "Populist Stance", a distinctive journalistic style under what Appraisal defines as the Commentator Voice, based on the narrative conveyed, and whose distinctive features would be rich linguistic expressions of closeness to readers, extensive occurrences of evaluative statements about individuals/groups, and a systematic limitation of the space for alternative positions. Experience from applying the Appraisal model in the study shows that a larger in-depth, systematic and comparative analysis of this type of material would be meaningful and possible, based on a combined quantitative/qualitative approach.