<p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate pupils’ attitudes towards spoken English and towards speaking in front of their friends, and how these attitudes appear to be related to their oral communication and communicative behaviour in the classroom. The material was collected by video taping two classes, a questionnaire in these two classes and by interviewing their teacher.</p><p>The results show that motivation and anxiety are psychological factors that play a significant role in the learning process. Attitudes, both towards the target language and towards their own production affect pupils’ willingness to communicate, and consequently their oral production in different tasks. The larger the group is, the more anxious they become. In order to motivate pupils, a variety of exercises is needed, where the topic is of great importance to awaken their interest for communication. The teacher also needs to circulate in the classroom to avoid a situation where pupils switch to their first language. Otherwise, pupils appear to code-switch as soon as an opportunity presents itself, which was observed in the analyses of recorded lessons.</p>

<p>African American Vernacular English, AAVE, is a variant of English spoken mostly by lower-class black citizens in the US. Since the most popular music genre among African Americans today is rap, this paper will describe what characterizes AAVE and rap music, and explore the use of AAVE in rap lyrics of both black and white rappers.</p><p>AAVE is different from Standard English in several respects; grammatically, phonologically and lexically. Examples of grammatical features in AAVE are invariant be, double negations and the differing use of possessive pronouns.</p><p>The hip hop industry has been, and still is, largely dominated by black performers, and white artists make up only a minority of rappers in the line of business today. Rappers being part of a larger culture, the hip hop nation, they have a language in common, and that language is AAVE. In this paper, a number of lyrics performed both by black and white rap artists have been compared and analyzed, in search of linguistic features of AAVE. This study provides evidence that AAVE is indeed used in rap lyrics, although the use of its features is often inconsistent. It is also shown that AAVE-presence in white rappers’ lyrics exists, but is sparser than in the works of their black equivalents.</p>

<p>When we converse we constantly fail to observe the rules of conversation in order to simplify and make dialogues more effective. The scriptwriters who work with TV shows use non-observances of maxims in order to evoke different feelings from their viewers. The aim of this paper was to investigate how frequently non-observances of maxims occurred in the TV shows Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show. I examined where and why they were used as well as how often flouting was used compared to violations. The base of the study was a drama and a comedy show.</p><p>Research has shown that the maxim of relevance is most frequently used to create different comical or dramatic situations. The scriptwriters have their characters ignore what is relevant to the situations in order to make them come off as flustered, odd and stupid in humorous situations and as mysterious, cowardly, respectful or bold in dramatic situations. Also research shows that flouting occurs more frequently than violations when it comes to breaking maxims. Violations occur most often with the maxim of quality when the characters lie to mislead in order to direct blame away from him/herself. In Conclusion, this investigation has shown that non-observances of maxims are important for scriptwriters in order to create humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction.</p>

<p>The aim of this paper was to investigate if students could become more proficient in their grammatical skills through feedback by underlining. The focus is on the problems students have with verbs when they learn English as a foreign language. 16 students from two different classes participated in the investigation. Eight of the students were interviewed on two occasions. They were shown essays they had written during the fall term of 2005. The teacher had underlined the errors they had made. During the interviews the students were asked to correct and explain the errors. The other eight students served as a control group since it could be suspected that the interviews might have an impact on the students’ performance.</p><p>The results of this paper show that the students who were interviewed were able to correct most of the errors that had been underlined. The students in this group also seemed to improve more than the control group, but the results of this investigation are inconclusive, since the total number of errors made was fairly small. Therefore, it is difficult to determine how much the students improved their proficiency in English grammar.</p>

<p><p>The Internet is in many cases our primary source for communication. As more communicative options online are introduced and become a part of our life, the language of the Internet, so called Netspeak, becomes a part of our language. The aim of this paper was to find out whether there is a difference in the use of Netspeak between teenagers and adults. The investigation was based on two message boards, one where the majority is teenagers and one where the majority is adults. Four different features of Netspeak were studied: exaggerated use of punctuation; exaggerated use of capital letters; abbreviations; and emoticons. All features are substitutes for paralanguage.</p><p>The results show that teenagers are more likely to use features such as exaggerated use of punctuation and capitals, and abbreviations. Adults are, however, more likely to use emoticons than teenagers.</p></p>

<p>The method of peer response has become an important part in process oriented writing classes and is often used at universities, but not in upper secondary school. The aim of this paper is to investigate how students in upper secondary school react when introduced to peer response, and whether or not they find it a beneficial way of working when trying to improve their writing. The aim is also to find out if the students’ texts improve as a result of a peer response session.</p><p>The results of my investigation show that the majority of the students who participated had positive reactions when introduced to peer response. All students agreed that the method was beneficial to improving their texts. Furthermore, according to the teacher, who read both the first and final versions of the texts, many of the students improved their texts enough after peer response to raise their grades. This confirms that peer response is, in fact, a good method to use when trying to improve students’ writing. However, even though the majority of the participants were positive to the idea of using peer response again, there were some students who prefer that only the teacher reads their assignments. This could be due to a lack of confidence concerning their own abilities or the fact that some texts are perceived as too personal and private. There will often be students who do not like to share their writing but the method could be modified and adapted to the situation of each class. Peer response can be combined with teacher response, or the groups can be reduced to pairs of two persons.</p>

<p>It is important to think about how to correct an essay and what the students should learn from it. My aim in this paper, is to look into what different researchers have said about feedback on written assignments and carry out a study of the kind of feedback that is actually used in secondary school today – and of what students and teachers think about it.</p><p>The results show that underlining is the marking technique mostly used in the secondary school where I did my investigation. This technique was also mostly preferred amongst the students. Two teachers were interviewed and both said that they used underlining because experience has shown that this marking technique is the most effective one. Furthermore, the results from the essays differed when analyzing errors corrected with complete underlining, partial underlining, crossing out and giving the right answer. One marking technique got good results when dealing with one kind of error, and worse in others. My conclusion is that teachers need to vary their marking technique depending on the specific kind of error.</p><p>Also, the results from a questionnaire showed that most of the students would like to get feedback on every written assignment. Not many of them said that they were already getting it, although this was what both teachers claimed. To conclude, there are many different ways to deal with marking and feedback. The key-word seems to be variation. As long as teachers vary their ways of dealing with marking and giving feedback, they will eventually find one or two that are most effective. Involving the students in this decision can also be a good idea, if they are interested.</p>

<p>My aim with this paper is to see whether there are any differences, when it comes to learning English, between students in practical and theoretical programs at upper secondary school in Sweden. I have looked at what differences there are when the students begin the programs and how the English A course differs in material, the students’ influence on their own studies and the atmosphere in the classrooms. Earlier studies have shown that adolescents from the lower social classes more often choose a practical program while students from higher social classes tend to choose a theoretical program. The students’ grades from lower-secondary school have an influence on the choice of program as well. Those with low grades from elementary school frequently choose a practical program whereas students with better grades more often choose a theoretical program. Though in my study, the students’ former grades did not differ that much. Further, studies have shown that students who would like to learn languages are divided into two types. The students are either so-called instrumental or integrative learners. My study showed that integrative exercises are used more often than instrumental exercises in upper-secondary school. Unfortunately, there are also some students that do not want to learn a second language at all and such students are in almost every class but they can be found more often in practical courses. To conclude, I found out in my study that there were differences between the courses in theoretical and practical programs. The differences affected the students in a way that made it easier to achieve a better grade in English in a theoretical program.</p>

<p>The aim of this study is to examine the language from a small sample of texts from the chat channels of World of Warcraft and analyze the differences found between World of Warcraft English and Standard English. In addition, the studywill compare the language found in World of Warcraft with language found on other parts of the Internet, especially chatgroups. Based on 1045 recorded chat messages, this study examines the use of abbreviations, emoticons, vocabulary, capitalization, spelling, multiple letter use and the use of rare characters. The results of the investigation show that the language of World of Warcraft differs from Standard English on several aspects, primarily in the use of abbreviations. This is supported by secondary sources. The results also show that the use of language is probably not based on the desire to deliver a message quickly, but rather to reach out to people. In addition, the results show that the language found in World of Warcraft is more advanced than a simple effort to try to imitate speech, thereby performing more than written speech.</p>

<p><strong> </strong></p><p> </p><p>The concept of outsiders has been argued to be one of the main themes in childhood fairy tales in general and in J.K. Rowling's <em>Harry Potter</em> novels in particular. Severus Snape is one of the most evident outsider characters in the novels, described as an unpleasant, ugly man presented as a double agent with uncertain allegiances. When the truth is revealed, in the very last pages of the series, he is discovered to have been an undercover spy for the good side all along. This essay examines Snape as an outsider, and analyzes his effect on the novel, especially his relation to the three characters with whom he interacts most: Dumbledore, Voldemort and Harry. All three of these characters are main characters and are also outsiders themselves in different ways. Examining the relations between good and evil and showing that these concepts are closely tied to choices and reactions towards being an outsider, the essay argues that the analysis of Snape as an outsider helps distinguish between aspects of good and evil in the novel. By focusing on Snape and the concept of the outsider, different dimensions of the novels become visible. Snape is here an instrumental character on his own, and may well be seen as the main character. Although the series in some aspects has been described as a fairy tale, the complex character of Severus Snape gives the novels a further depth appealing not only to children, but to adults as well.</p>