Syftet med detta arbete är att åskådliggöra variationen i det ordförråd som presenteras i läromedelsserien Good Stuff för skolår 4–6. Mer precist har följande forskningsfrågor behandlats: (i) Vilka ord är mest frekventa i böckernas texter? (ii) I vilken utsträckning förekommer och på vilket sätter sker återanvändning av orden? (iii) Vilka seman­tiska domäner finns representerade i det ordförråd som presenteras i de tre böckerna? För att besvara dessa frågor har en korpus av alla texterna i de tre böckerna skapats. Analysen  visar att läromedlet till viss del stöttar ordinlärning (t.ex. genom övningar som kräver djupare mental bearbetning), men att det också skulle kunna förbättras i detta hänseende, i synnerhet gäller detta ordfrekvens och återanvändning av orden. / The aim of this study is to shed light on variation in the vocabulary presented in Good Stuff, a teaching material aimed at school years 4–6 (age group 10–12 years) in Sweden. More precisely, the following questions have been considered: (i) What words are most frequent in the books? (ii) To what extent and in what way are the words recycled? (iii) What semantic domains are represented in the vocabulary presented in the three books? To answer these questions, a corpus of all the texts in the three books has been compiled. The analyses show that this teaching material supports vocabulary learning to some extent (e.g., with exercises demanding mental processing), but also that it could be improved in that respect, in particular as regards word frequency and recycling of words.

The diploma thesis focuses opening a world of drama education to a group of young learners who are unexperienced at DE. The theoretical part aims to prepare readers to understand a beginner class specifics same as working with aim planning for a particular group of students. In the practical part of the thesis I construct one semester plan of aims for concrete collective of students and assess if the plan was made appropriately, if the goals were achieved and what changes must have been done to adjust the plan to real conditions. Furthermore, the practical part offers tips of lessons and their reflections and it maps development of the study group. Overall aim of the thesis is to bring to a reader theoretical background of working with a DE class of beginners, plan of goals for concrete group and its fulfilling.

The theoretical part of the thesis scrutinizes the principles of awareness raising and noticing in language teaching. Furthermore, it focuses on their implementation in pronunciation teaching and examines the possible limitations to these approaches imposed by learners' age and level of cognitive development. The practical part presents a research which consists of designing a battery of pronunciation activities promoting noticing and awareness raising, followed by their pilotage in five different groups of elementary school pupils. The aim of the research is to determine whether the piloted activities result in young learners noticing the target pronunciation features. The results of the research suggest positive impact of the noticing and awareness raising activities even among the pupils at lower stage of cognitive development. Key words: young learners, teaching pronunciation, consciousness raising, noticing, cognitive development, learners' involvement

Teachers work with large student groups and their job is to make their pupils’ grow and evolve in their learning every day, even though the students may not be interested in the subject at all. How can teachers manage to do this with such a variety of students? What tools can be used to motivate as many of them as possible to achieve the most favourable learning outcomes? Music is a universal language that most people enjoy and for children it is even a natural part of growing up. Music can be a pleasant and fun element in the classroom, so we want to investigate if teachers could take advantage of this and use music and songs as an effective motivator to foster second language development. In the national curriculum, Skolverket states that teachers need to build upon the pupil’s confidence in their own ability to use language in different situations and for different purposes (Skolverket, 2011). What happens with the classroom environment when music is used and what happens to the pupils? There is research pointing to the benefits of using music in second language learning however, there exists some disagreement among researchers if music could improve language development or if it is just a fun activity. Researchers also discuss on how to use music in the classroom in the most valuable way. In the current study, we explore and provide an overview for the possible advantages of using music. We also investigate the effectiveness of different musical approaches for facilitating language learning for young children in an educational context. In particular, we will discuss how songs and music can motivate young English language learners in their process and how the second language development can benefit from this.

This study investigates the intercultural development with young learners from Sweden and New Zealand, when using written telecollaboration as a tool. Telecollaboration; is a tool used for online collaboration, it provides for a possibility of connecting students from across the globe and can function as a supplement to traditional teaching. The exchange, took place over a couple of months, connecting two remote and quite unknown corners of the world, from the students’ perspective. Students shared cultural topics with their peers through the course of two emails each, as well as, creating an overall multimodal presentation of their school. The telecollaborative exchange was done in the quest to develop the students social and self-awareness regarding culture through authentic meetings. The data collected is in the form of mind-maps, multi-choice surveys and unstructured observations. Visible themes, found during the project, is unpacked and analysed in accordance with Byram’s (1997) theoretical model of ICC. These themes are also compared with findings of previous research on telecollaboration in educational settings. The results of the study revealed that a development of the young learners’ intercultural understanding was partially achieved. Furthermore, implications met, was the limitation of time as well as the range of technology available.

Den här kunskapsöversikten syftar till att redogöra för olika aspekter som bidrar till ökad motivation hos elever i de tidiga skolårens skrivundervisning. Kunskapsöversikten är en sammanställning av tio vetenskapliga artiklar som har tagits fram genom en systematisk litteratursökning via databasen ERIC via Proquest. Genom våra söksträngar har vi velat undersöka vad forskningen menar vara bidragande aspekter till ökad skrivmotivation. Studierna som används i denna kunskapsöversikt har visat på resultat som lyfter olika aspekter som bidrar till ökad skrivmotivation. Dessa resultat har därmed analyserats, tematiserats, presenterats och diskuterats. Resultatet visar att det finns flera olika aspekter i undervisningen som påverkar elevernas skrivmotivation. En aspekt som lyfts och diskuteras extra är arbetet med digitala verktyg, då våra valda studier har ställt sig olika till detta. I slutsatsen diskuteras sedan lärares förhållningssätt till digitala verktyg utifrån gjorda praktikerfarenheter, valda studier samt utifrån styrdokumenten. Utifrån diskussionen dras en slutsats om hur lärare har möjlighet att påverka elevernas skrivmotivation genom utformningen av skrivundervisningen. Slutligen ges det förslag på hur vidare forskning inom området skulle kunna utformas.

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The question of the asset of early foreign language learning is a frequently discussed topic. Following prevailing opinion in society, that ‚the sooner, the better ', the beginning of compulsory foreign language learning is continually shifting in lower grades at primary school. A lot of children have already started with foreign language learning in kindergarten. Researches, which support the benefits of the approach, focus on a very narrow aspect of foreign language acquisition (pronunciation) or survey these facts with a specific group of inhabitants (immigrants). As experts point out, there is no significant benefit of early instructions ascertained in the Czech Republic. However, the research focused only on adults. We do not have any further evidence of the advantages of starting to learn a foreign language early. Therefore, the author focused on comparing the level of foreign language competences of two groups of pupils after their two-year compulsory instructions of English at primary school. The aim was to compare the level of their language competence in English and the learners' potential difficulties by the learners with early learning experience and by the learners without previous experience of foreign language learning before the beginning of compulsory learning at primary school....

Det engelska språket har genom åren börjat undervisas i allt yngre åldrar i Sverige där muntlig produktion utgör en stor del av undervisningen. För många elever är detta kul och spännande men för vissa elever uppstår talängslan. Talängslan avser att känna oro och obehag inför att tala. Den här studien har genomförts utifrån intresset att undersöka vad elever har för attityder till den muntliga kommunikationen i engelskundervisningen samt vad lärare har för uppfattningar om talängslan och hur de arbetar för att främja muntlig produktion i ämnet. Studien är genomförd utifrån både elev- och lärarperspektiv genom metodkombination där enkäter och semistrukturerade intervjuer använts. All insamlad empiri har koncentrerats, kategoriserats och tolkats utifrån en induktiv ansats samt teorin WTC och det sociokulturella perspektivet. Informanterna i denna studie var 38 elever i årskurserna 2 och 3 samt tre lärare med behörighet att undervisa engelska i årskurserna 1–3. Resultatet visar att elever i årskurserna 2 och 3 till stor del har en positiv inställning till den muntliga produktionen i engelskämnet. Sammantaget visar resultatet från både elevenkäter och lärarintervjuer att talängslan förekommer, om än i liten grad. Resultatet visar även att elevernas trygghet ligger till grund för elevernas vilja att kommunicera på engelska, där varierade arbetssätt, mindre grupper och elevernas intressen förespråkas. / Over the years, the English language has started to be taught at younger ages in Sweden where oral production forms a large part of the education. For many pupils this is fun and exciting, but for some pupils language anxiety can occur. Language anxiety refers to feeling anxiety and discomfort towards speaking. This study has been carried out based on the interest to investigate pupils' attitudes towards oral communication in English education, and teachers' perceptions of language anxiety and how they work to promote oral production in the English language class. The study is carried out from both pupils and teacher perspectives through a combination of methods where questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used. All collected data has been compiled, categorized, and interpreted based on an inductive approach as well as the WTC theory and the socio-cultural perspective. The informants in this study were 38 pupils in grades 2 and 3, and three teachers with authorization to teach English in grades 1–3. The results show that pupils in grades 2 and 3 mainly have a positive attitude towards oral production in the English subject. Overall, the results from both pupils’ questionnaires and teacher interviews show that language anxiety occurs, albeit to a small degree. The results also show that the pupils' sense of safety is the basis for the pupils' willingness to communicate in English, where varied working methods, smaller groups and the pupils' interests are advocated. / <p>Engelska</p>

This paper explores the impact of incorporating songs in the English classroom and will focus on young student’s development of vocabulary and language acquisition. The aim is more driven towards singing, and how that can be a beneficial communicative tool for young language learners in a Swedish context. By it being from the Swedish context, the Swedish curriculum will be reviewed on how songs are incorporated for the ages seven to twelve. The result of the aim has been produced through the analysis of various collected research sources and lays on the role that singing can have in the early stage of learning EFL(English as a foreign language). When searching for the sources different collecting databases, such as “ERIC”, and specific keywords were used to find the most reliable and relevant sources. The results of the collected sources were then compared to each other. Overall, all results showed a beneficial impact when using singing as a communicative tool in students’ vocabulary development. The different sources also point out the perspectives on teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards songs and singing in the lessons. Where results showcased a positive attitude toward the use of singing songs in the EFL classroom. The essential findings of this paper show that singing can be used as a valuable communicative tool for the EFL classroom. Likewise, can it have some problematic factors. For example, if the teacher and students do not like the song or are not interested in singing in the first place. We summarize and discuss the sources in separate parts of this paper. This is so you can get a deeper understanding of the objective results that have been found