<p>Many English teachers see British English as the standard variety and teach this variety in the classroom. Their students are, however, also exposed to a great deal of American English in today’s media. As a result, there are a lot of students who use a mixture of these varieties because of the double input, both from media and from the teachers in school. In this paper, I interviewed teachers from Swedish secondary and upper secondary schools to find out what their attitudes towards British and American English were and whether these attitudes were reflected in their teaching. I also examined whether the teachers actually spoke the variety of English they thought they did as well as what their views were on students using a mixture of varieties. The focus of this essay will be on American English and British English.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate different types of feedback and how they are used in schools, and to see which of them are preferred when it comes to error correction. Feedback is used in schools every day even though it is difficult to know if students really learn from it. Students tend to only glance briefly at the paper or test when it is returned and then throw it away. They are interested in how they scored but not really in how to improve their errors until next time. In this study, students wrote essays which were corrected with four different types of feedback and handed back to the students. The students got a chance to revise them and then the result was analyzed. The students were also given a questionnaire in order for me to find out what kind of feedback they liked the most and compare it to the result of the essay corrections. The different feedback types worked well with different students in general, although, underlining with description did not only work best, it was also chosen as the best type by most students. They seemed to think that this type was good for learning something from the feedback. Most students wanted to look for errors themselves instead of getting the correct answer from the teacher.</p>

En uppsats om kvinnor och feminism inom den moderna kriminal litteraturen.

A large discrepancy between national exam results and final grades in English has been found in compulsory school. Between 1.9% and 18.7%, depending on which school, of students receive a course grade that is different from their grade on the national exam. (Corren, 2001 and Skolvärlden, 2012) As a result, many students have not in reality reached the criteria for the passing grade. In my experience, many students come to us with low self-esteem and motivation due to their difficulties with learning a second language. This study compares two ways of learning and their effects on self-esteem, motivation, accuracy and fluency. The subjects were all the students in the college that started year one, and on paper had the grade pass from compulsory school, but in reality had not reached that level. The students were divided into two groups, one with focus on accuracy, and one with focus on fluency. The accuracy-based task followed the style of a traditional English course book. The fluency-based task had one part where the students told each other about various topics and another where they were encouraged to practice their writing skills by keeping a journal. The students were assessed using one evaluation test, a questionnaire and a final test. The questionnaire provided data for the students’ perceived change in fluency, accuracy, self-esteem and motivation. The written tests provided data for accuracy and fluency. The results in this study showed an overall increase in accuracy, fluency and self-confidence in the accuracy-based task, but that only the fluency-based task enhanced motivation.

This is an essay about Indian English and especially its presentaion in the novels The Inheritance of Loss and The White Tiger. The focus is on the lexical presentation in the novels. There is also a presentation of the concept Indian English.

To lure potential customers to buy a holiday away from home, most marketers incorporate certain semantic and pragmatic features into their promotional material: words and images are chosen with utmost care. The present study is conducted in order to reveal these semantic and pragmatic features and equally, to show how they highlight the concept of “magic”.This research is based on responses from six different interviews in which the interviewees had to describe twelve key words and key phrases taken from twelve tourism advertisements, in and out of context. Secondary material further consists of publications dealing with the areas of linguistics, advertising and tourism.The conclusion of this research will reveal that the impact of tourism advertisements depends on agreement between various semantic and pragmatic elements rather than implementation of individual semantic and pragmatic features per se. In other words, all the semantic and pragmatic elements (linguistic and non-linguistic content) have to reinforce one another, acknowledging common ground and meeting the reader's pre-existing assumptions. Hence, for an advertisement to avoid ambiguity it has to be relevance-governed, delivering just what is necessary to ensure that the reader is able to decode the message: that one should leave the ordinary and travel to a temporary, yet seemingly magical holiday destination.

Stereotypical gender roles have probably existed as long as human culture and are such a natural part if our lives that we barely take notice of them. Nevertheless, images of what we perceive as typically masculine and feminine in appearance and behavior depend on the individual’s perception. Within each gender one can find different stereotypes. A commonly assumed idea is that men are hard tough, while women are soft and vulnerable. I find it interesting hoe stereotypes function and how they are preserved almost without our awareness. Once I started reading and researching the topic of stereotypes it became clear to me that literature contains many stereotypes. The intension of this essay is to critically examine the stereotypical gender roles in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams in 1947. It is remarkable how the author portrays the three main characters: Stanley, Stella and Blanche. The sharp contracts and the dynamics between them are fascinating.

It is generally believed that when learning another language, students most commonly use their first language as the source of language influence. In the Basque region of Spain people are either Spanish monolinguals or Basque bilinguals and in this case study I set out to see whether students use Spanish or Basque as a reference when learning English. The three most common written errors of Spanish monolinguals and Basque bilinguals were analyzed by using Error Analysis as an analytical tool. The errors were not only described but also reasons were put forward as to why these errors were made. Even though Basque was the first language of half of the students, the results show that Spanish was the main source of influence when writing in English.

<p>The essay has been written in order to give a picture of culture teaching within the subject of English in upper secondary schools in Sweden. Although earlier research within this field is still not very extensive, a theoretical framework has been based on the results available and the syllabuses for the subject of English in the upper secondary school. A questionnaire with open question has been used as a tool for collecting data. The main focus is put on analyzing the contents of and ways in which teachers deal with cultural studies, considering the goals in the syllabuses. The results support the results of previous scientific investigations concerning culture studies in Swedish schools and show that culture teaching is often dealt with in the traditional ways where culture is viewed mainly as customs, traditions and history of the target language country, and where teachers mainly choose cultural elements from the UK and the US and seldom from other English speaking countries.</p><p>Various factors that influence teachers choices in their cultural studies are examined and alternative changes considering the teaching methods, for example ethnographic training, are proposed. The uncertainty about how to approach and what to include in cultural studies is reflected in the testing of students on cultural issues. The survey shows that half the respondents do not test their pupils on culture at all. The conclusion, based on the results of this survey and the previous research, is that no great changes have taken place within this field over the last decade and that further continuous study of culture teaching is recommended.</p>

<p>The aim of this essay is to investigate how writing is taught in upper secondary school as well as what kind of writing is taught, the teachers’ attitudes towards writing and how written production is assessed. I am interested to see if teachers use different methods both when it comes to teaching and grading writing.</p><p>My research is based on recorded interviews with four upper secondary school teachers from two different schools. The teachers were interviewed on their planning, executing and grading of writing within English A and B. I have also carried out extensive reading of earlier research in order to get a complete background.</p><p>The result shows that all four teachers believe that writing is an important part of language learning and they all enjoy teaching it. The main focus is put on the formal aspects of writing, in order to prepare students for the national tests. Only one of the four teachers feel that creative writing is the best way to learn a second language. All teachers go through the formal rules of writing with the entire class before giving them an assignment. The biggest difference between the different teachers is the marking and final grading of the written production, where one teacher does not grade assignments at all and another has developed her own scale.</p>