<p>The purpose of this essay is to study how the major syntactic structure is affected when a literary text is translated from English into Swedish. That is, to study what operations take place and the frequency of the different operations in a translation. The purpose is also to see how much the freedom of translation varies between different translators.</p>

<p>This essay investigates native Swedish speakers’ problems in the area of prepositions. A total of 19 compositions, including 678 prepositions, written by native Swedish senior high school students were analysed. All the prepositions in the material were judged as either basic, systematic or idiomatic. Then all the errors of substitution, addition and omission were counted and corrected. As hypothesised, least errors were found in the category of basic prepositions and most errors were found in the category of idiomatic prepositions. However, the small difference between the two categories of systematic and idiomatic prepositions suggests that the learners have greater problems with systematic prepositions than what was first thought to be the case. Basic prepositions cause little or no problems. Systematic prepositions, i.e. those that are rule governed or whose usage is somehow generalisable, seem to be quite problematic to native Swedish speakers. Idiomatic prepositions seem to be learnt as ‘chunks’, and the learners are either aware of the whole constructions or do not use them at all. They also cause some problems for Swedish speakers. Since prepositions are often perceived as rather arbitrary without rules to sufficiently describe them, these conclusions might not be surprising to teachers, students and language learners. The greatest error cause was found to be interference from Swedish, and a few errors could be explained as intralingual errors. It seems as if the learners’ knowledge of their mother tongue strongly influences the acquisition of English prepositions.</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>At the turn of the 19th century, ideas promoting women’s rights were sweeping across America. During that time Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was published, portraying a young woman, Edna Pontellier, who after several years of emotional unfullfilment in her marriage questions her place as a woman in her marriage as well in society. Edna’s Presbyterian Kentuckian upbringing is in opposition to Catholic Creole society that her husband belongs to. Creole society, at that time, was governed by its unwritten social codes, which were especially clear on issues concerning women’s traditional roles in society in connection to marriage and social duties. In this essay I present how Edna’s emotional awakening and her struggle to achieve independence are in conflict with the cultural norms that exist in Creole society. Also, I argue that the reason why Edna fails in her search for individual freedom is because her awakening is emotional and not intellectual; she lacks knowledge and cannot perceive herself beyond the conventions that limit and oppress her. Additionally, Edna cannot find guidance in any of the other women because they all act within the frames of the role they are playing.</p>

<p>Novels with love as a theme often deal with a passionate or forbidden love. In 1925 William Somerset Maugham wrote a different version of the typical love story we have read so many times. It tells a story about a married couple who never really shares the same love for each other. Maugham mentions that he was inspired by Dante when he wrote The Painted Veil. Indeed, he uses different sources of inspirations, such as poems from Shelley and Goldsmith. The aim of this essay is to investigate what these intertextual references bring to the novel and what their functions are. The method I use is looking at the different references used by Maugham and stating their purpose and significance to the novel. The result of my investigation illustrates how the use of Shelley’s theme of veiling signifies hiding, as well as not wanting to see the truth, while Goldsmith’s poem shows the true relationship between the married couple and how corrupted society is. Maugham also lets Dante’s Purgatorio demonstrate how Kitty, the wife, gets the chance to change her life for the better.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay is to analyze how loss affects the identity of the main characters in Toni Morrison’s Sula. An examination of the African-American community in Sula reveals a history of collective loss, both material and non-material, which limits the identity formation of the individual. This burden challenges the protagonists of the novel, Sula and Nel, as they come of age in the 1920s and continues to trouble them throughout their lives. By first defining loss and identity and then examining how loss affects identity in the community, family and individual, this paper will argue that although loss can limit the individual, it can also act as a catalyst for personal growth. Furthermore, I will show that despite the fact that Sula and Nel react differently to loss they both gain a sense of selfhood in the end.</p>

<p>The aim of this essay is to investigate to what degree films and TV-programs are shown in two Swedish 8^th grade English classes today and to see if this is a fruitful teaching method. The investigation was carried out with the help of a student survey, two teacher interviews and interviews following directly on their viewing of the TV-show <em>Goal</em>.  The result was that the students do not seem to learn a great deal from watching films or TV-shows in English class. They hear words that they already know and this provides reinforcement, but they learn very few new words. However, watching films and TV-shows is a good way to motivate students to work with their ordinary classroom English. Films and TV-shows were shown regularly according to the interviewed teacher, but the students thought that they saw too few movies and TV-shows. The teachers saw movies and TV-shows as a useful teaching addition, but they thought that the students learned more by traditional methods. The students, on the other hand, thought that they learned a great deal from watching movies and enjoy doing so. The time used to show movies and TV-shows today seems to be sufficient. TV-shows and films should be used as motivation and as a complement to classroom instruction rather than as a teaching material in itself.</p> / Lärarutbildning