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Individual differences in early literacy skills can be attributed to children’s previous history of emergent literacy experiences during their preschool years. The purpose of this qualitative study was to learn about the emergent literacy experiences of one Libyan American preschooler and one Syrian American preschooler and how their families support these experiences in their bilingual homes. Through the lens of social theory of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), this multi-case study was designed to explore family literacy practices with a preschooler in a naturalistic setting. The questions guiding this study were: (1) How did the texts, tools, and technologies available in two bilingual home settings impact the emergent literacy practices of a Libyan American child and a Syrian American child? (2) What support did family members provide for these two children as they developed emergent literacy practices in their bilingual home settings? Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, digital-recordings of family literacy practices with a preschooler, audio-recorded in-depth interviews with the parents, home visits, the preschoolers’ writing samples, and photographs of literacy activities, materials, and the home environment. The recorded family literacy practices and interviews were transcribed and analyzed to identify emerging themes. Both within-case analysis and cross-case analysis were conducted. Findings revealed that the preschoolers in both families use a multimodal process such as talking, drawing, singing, chanting, recitation, technologies, and sociodramatic play in their daily literacy experiences. The parents are not concerned with teaching their children specific literacy skills; but they naturally use techniques for keeping them on task and questioning skills to enhance oral language and comprehension development. These families’ home literacy practices are Americanized by living in the mainstream social group, and English is frequently used among the family members. However, their bilingualism and religious literacy practices enrich and vary their children’s emergent literacy experiences and their family literacy practices. The significance of this study resides in the importance of getting to know individual families’ backgrounds to better understand and respect the cultural practices of family literacy.

The purpose of the study is to investigate into professional knowledge of the bilingual teachers, compared to monolingual, and what benefits they give to pre-school. Qualitative method was used to get an understanding of informant´s perspective on bilingual teachers. The informants believe that bilingual teachers are able to understand all the children. A bilingual teacher can make the children feel secure. If one has a positive attitude toward bilingualism, the bilingual children also show a positive attitude that in turn contributes to learning and development of the language.

During the last decades, immigration to Sweden has increased. As a result of this, a larger number of individuals are growing up with two languages. This means that the field of bilingualism has emerged as topic of relevance in Sociology, as well as other disciplines of Social Sciences. Bilingualism has been studied from different perspectives in Linguistics. However, in Sociology, focus has been mostly on the questions of integration, culture and ethnicity, where language has been seen as one of many aspects. I argue that bilingualism is an important social phenomenon in its own right, since it shapes the everyday lives of bilingual individuals and changes the landscape of our society. Using Grounded Theory, bilingualism in the everyday life is analyzed and explored, using material from qualitative interviews with ten individuals who have grown up with Swedish and one other language. It is here suggested that bilingualism in the everyday life can be understood as a process of handling ambivalence. This process takes place between the social context and the self and is influenced by and influences them both. A central part of this process is bilingualism seen simultaneously as tension and as resource.

My intention with this study was to examine the concepts “mother tongue” and “mother tongue education” and how these concepts are understood by some parents. To reach this goal I’ve conducted a qualitative study, wherein I’ve interviewed eight parents with foreign backgrounds. The study is inspired by hermeneutics in its interpretation of results. From this study I can reach several conclusions. To begin with, all parents had a positive view of the mother tongue concept and mother tongue education. It is very important for their children. They need their mother tongue and mother tongue support to be able to communicate with others who speak the same language, and to strengthen their self confidence and achieve a strong personality and identity. Another thing the study shows is that there are some deficiencies in this area, for instance the insufficient amount of teaching hours, the unsuitable scheduling, large class sizes and mother tongue teachers not speaking the same dialect as the children. A third recurring result is the deficient communication between teachers and the parents in the study. The informants had a desire to improve these aspects to allow for the development of the childrens’ mother tongue.

This essay has investigated the question of an ongoing language shift from Plattdeutsch and German to Spanish among the Mennonites in Paraguay and the role of the school in this process. The aims of the study were to compare the use of languages among the Mennonites in Asuncion and in the Menno colony and to identify the importance that parents give to the languages and to compare this with a school leader perspective. The aim was also to identify factors that influence the language shift and identify the influence that the shift excerpts on Mennonite values and identity. The results are based on my own observations, interviews with Mennonite women and interviews with key informants who have insight into the school policy issues. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational and language planning. There is a need to consciously sit down and re-define the Mennonite identity and to make the community and the school aware of their responsibility in language maintenance.

The present research examined whether morphology influences word recognition independently of form-level word properties. Prevailing views attribute cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing to variations in morphological structure and/or productivity. This study tested whether morphological processing is additionally influenced by the orthographic depth of written language, by comparing primed word naming among biliterate readers of Hindu and Urdu, languages written in distinct orthographies but sharing a common morphophonology. Results from five experiments supported the view that morphological processing in orthographically shallow (transparent) Hindi script diverged significantly from that in the deeper (opaque) Urdu orthography. Specifically, morphological priming was differently affected in Hindi vs. Urdu by prim presentation conditions (Exps. 1-3): very briefly exposed (48ms), forward masked morphological primes facilitated word naming in Hindi but not in Urdu. Neither briefly presented, unmasked primes nor longer prime exposures (80ms/240ms) produced priming in Hindi, but Experiment 2 showed priming by unmasked Hindi primes at a 240 ms exposure. By contrast, Urdu exhibited morphological priming only for forward masked primes at the long exposure of 240ms. Thus, early-onset priming in Hindi resembled morpho-orthographic decomposition previously recorded in English, whereas Urdu evinced priming consistent with morpho-semantic effects documented across several languages. Hemispheric asymmetry in morphological priming also diverged across Hindi and Urdu (Exps. 4 and 5); Hindi revealed a non-significant numerical trend for facilitation by morphological primes only in the right visual field (RVF), whereas reliable morphological priming in Urdu was limited to left visual field (LVF) presentation.Disparate patterns in morphological processing asymmetry were corroborated by differences in baseline visual field asymmetries in Hindi vs. Urdu word recognition- filler words elicited a consistent RVF advantage in Hindi, whereas in Urdu, one-syllable fillers, but not two- and three-syllable words revealed the RVF advantage. Taken together, the findings suggest that the variable of orthographic depth be integrated more explicitly into mainstream theoretical accounts of the mechanisms underlying morphological processing in word recognition. In addition, this study highlights the psycholinguistic potential of the languages Hindi and Urdu for advancing our understanding of the role of orthography as well as phonology in morphological processing.

<p>Vårt syfte med den här uppsatsen är att ta reda på hur flerspråkiga ungdomar ser på sin flerspråkighet i förhållande till sin språk- och identitetsutveckling. I våra undersökningar har vi utgått från tre flerspråkiga ungdomars berättelser om sina upplevelser kring sin språk- och identitetsutveckling under sin skoltid. Genom användningen av livsberättelser som metod har vi fördjupat oss i och fått större förståelse för deras livssituation. Deras berättelser har berikat vår syn på flerspråkighetens komplexa mening, vilket innefattar kultur, språk och identitet. Vi har uppnått vårt syfte genom att frågan besvarats utifrån ungdomarnas berättelser. Deras skildringar säger oss att kunskaperna i ens modersmål är av största vikt för individens språk- och identitetsutveckling. Men också det att andras bemötande av ens flerspråkighet ligger till grund för hur individen uppfattar sig själv.</p><p>Informanternas erfarenheter belyser den sammansatta vardag de dagligen möter. För den delen är det inte självklart att dessa tre ungdomars erfarenheter kan vara representativa för alla de flerspråkiga ungdomar som lever i dagens mångkulturella Sverige. Trots detta tycker vi att deras röster säger oss en hel del om de synsätten som råder i dagens samhälle.</p>

<p>This essay investigates cases of Swedish-English code-switching in a bilingual discussion forum on the Internet. Code-switching is a linguistic term used to describe switches from one language to another in discourse. The material consists of excerpts from the forum which have been analyzed and presents various cases of code-switching which appeared in the forum. The examples from the forum presented in this essay are chosen due to their relevance to code-switching and bilingualism. The examples were analyzed according to Romaine’s (1989) and Klintborg’s (1999) classifications of code-switching.</p><p>The research questions sought to find out if, how and why the bilingual users in this forum code-switch when communicating. The results proved that the bilingual users do code-switch, and that the most common switch is the insertion of one word, or several words, in another language into an otherwise monolingual sentence. The discussion part also consists of a summary of the switches in the forum.</p><p>The conclusion of the study is that code-switching does exist in this forum, and the participants code-switch in different ways, however mainly to show hospitality and to signal a belonging to the group.</p>

<p>Dagens Sverige är mångkulturellt och flerspråkigt således även förskolan. Detta gör att kunskap om hur man som pedagog samt tvåspråkig förälder på bästa sätt ska stimulera och utveckla tvåspråkiga barns språkutveckling viktiga och nödvändiga vilket också utgör syftet med denna undersökning. Det ska vara möjligt för det tvåspråkiga barnet att utveckla alla sina språk, dvs. både svenska och modersmålet. Därför ska förskolan vara ett komplement till hemmet.</p><p> </p><p> Metoden har varit att intervjua pedagoger som har erfarenhet av att arbeta med tvåspråkiga barn samt att intervjua tvåspråkiga föräldrar.</p><p> </p><p> Pedagoger som arbetar med tvåspråkiga barn har oftast skaffat sig kunskaper på egen hand genom lång arbetserfarenhet. Slutsatsen blev även att man idag prioriterar tvåspråkiga barns modersmål i högre grad än tidigare i förskolan men modersmålets status behövs öka ytterligare så att verkligheten blir som sådant att man på modersmål ser som tvåspråkiga barns rättighet.</p><p> </p>