<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>

<p>The aim of this essay was to investigate the knowledge of, and attitudes towards unbiased English usage amongst Swedish upper secondary school students. For the purpose of this study, a survey was carried out at an upper secondary school in southern Sweden. In the theoretical background section, terms such as political correctness and gender-neutral language use are defined. In addition, references are made to studies in the United States and Europe on students’ awareness of these aspects of language.</p><p>For the present study, a survey was carried out in which 41 students answered 13 questions in written form. The students attend their third year at four different programmes at upper secondary school.</p><p>The results show that a majority of the students are very aware of the sensitivity of referring to persons of colour, and they are even afraid of being perceived as racists if they use terms such as black American. As regards non-sexist language use, the Swedish students were aware of the fact that terms such as firefighter and police officer can be used to designate both men and women. However, the students have little knowledge of the title Ms and of the neutral alternative to chairman, chair.</p>

<p>This analysis deals with the difficulties in translating a medical text from English into Swedish. As primary source, I have used a British textbook about geriatrics called Nursing Older People which is aimed at university students of nursing. The selected chapter is called Person-centred dementia care written by the authors Sue Davies, Barry Aveyard and Ian J. Norman. The translation difficulties have involved terminology and cultural aspects. This analysis shows how these problems were tackled by studying different translation theories, such as Munday (2001) who refers to Koller’s theory about equivalence and Vinay & Darbelnet’s model of direct translation and oblique translation as well as Ingo (2007) who accounts for text sort conventions.</p><p>The terminological problems involved choosing the most appropriate term for describing diagnosis, diseases, body organs and symptoms. There was a wide variety of terms from old Graeco-Latin terms to English terms coined in the 1990s. Other terms were related to the international field of epidemiology as well as the organisation of care for the elderly, based on the Swedish Social Services Act. A suitable choice was possible by considering aspects like frequent usage of field specific words and collocations in parallel texts.</p><p>The cultural aspects involved cultural references such as differences between Sweden and the UK as for national institutions and organisations. The solution was to find a cultural equivalent or, when this was not possible, explain the term in a footnote.</p>

<p>In this essay I look at J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace from a rather different perspective. I argue that, despite his less than heroic attributes, David Lurie is the protagonist of an adventure and follows Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s ditto. Furthermore, the goal of David Lurie’s journey lies in self-realization and self-reinvention, which is not typical for the hero’s journey. The Ultimate Boon is usually something else but different times call for different heroes. In J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading, Derek Attridge suggests that David Lurie grows on the reader throughout the novel and is a better person at the end (Attridge 183). This indicates that David Lurie goes through a process personally that changes him in a positive direction. Besides Campbell’s theory, the theories of Propp and Stanford are presented and put to good use as theoretical background. Since this essay deals with both narratology and structuralism I provide short explanations of these two branches of literature criticism as presented in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory. I then discuss relevant passages from Disgrace in connection with the different stages of the hero’s journey as described by Campbell. I do so in the order they are presented in Campbell’s book.</p>

<p>The main topic of this essay is heteronormativity and the main question is how Jackie Kay’s Trumpet relates to this concept. My assumption is that Kay has created a main protagonist that seems to completely coincide with heteronormative discourse only to show us how insufficient this discourse is when it comes to identifying people. I argue that Kay defies / mocks heteronormative discourse in this way and I try to show this using discourse and queer theory. In the end, I have to conclude that this love story of Joss and Millie presents us with an alternative discourse that is, however, not so different from the dominant discourse.</p><p>The essay consists of two parts that lead us to a conclusion: in the first part I look at the institutionalized relationships that the main protagonist is involved in and in the second part I consider why nobody ever confronts the main protagonist.</p>

<p>Detta examensarbete visar resultatet av en undersökning om hur språklärare i engelska, franska och tyska på gymnasieskolan använder sig av autentiskt material i undervisningen och hur de tror att detta påverkar eleverna.En kvalitativ forskningsmetod har använts och därefter har resultaten analyserats med ad hoc-metoden.</p><p>Resultaten visade att nästan samtliga lärare blandade läroböcker och autentiskt material i sin undervisning för att ge variation. Den främsta anledningen till detta var att lärarna upplever att elevernas motivation ökar dåundervisningen varieras och om eleverna kan se en viss verklighetsanknytning. Vissa skillnader mellan språken påvisades, då engelsklärarna i större grad uppgav att de använde autentiskt material i undervisningen. Lärare ityska och franska menade oftare att brist på material och elevernas kunskapsnivå förhindrade arbetet med autentiskt material. Lärarna påpekade även att kursplanen inte hade någon påverkan gällande materialet, utan attdet var varje lärares beslut att ta.</p>

<p>The aim of this thesis is to establish whether In Cold Blood could be considered to be the true account Truman Capote intended it to be. Capote spent many years researching the murder in Kansas with the aim of writing a news story in the style of fiction. Even so, this essay argues that it is not a completely true account. In order to reach a conclusion this essay studies the concept of new journalism and answers the following questions:</p><p>•What are the problems of depicting reality in writing?</p><p>•What narrative techniques are found in In Cold Blood?</p><p>•Is In Cold Blood subjective or objective in its portrayal of the story and its characters?</p><p>The conclusion also shows that In Cold Blood is too manipulated and subjective in order to be seen as a completely true account that can be read as a news story. It is merely one view of the murder and In Cold Blood is therefore best read as a fiction novel.</p>

<p>This study sets out to investigate the extent to which slasher movies can be said to carry out linguistic female stereotyping in their portrayal of female characters. It has been proposed (cf. Coates 1993)that female speech is often associated with politeness, tentativeness, talkativeness and weaker expressions in comparison with men, descending from a female subculture (Graddol & Swann 1989: 90). Considering this, a stereotypical profile was created, consisting of linguistic features such as hedges, questions, expletives, empty adjectives and verbosity, through which the former characteristics may be manifested. The stereotypical profile was then applied to the corpus consisting of the transcripts of the two slasher movies "Halloween" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". Evidence of all linguistic features mentioned above was found in the corpus, and the female characters' use of these features did match, to a considerable extent, the stereotypical profile.</p><p>Keywords: linguistics, female stereotyping, gender, horror</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>This essay deals with the creation and usage of nicknames in synchronous CMC. Nicknames from four different IRC chat conversations related to three different topic groups have been examined. The method draws on Bechar-Israeli’s (1996) categorisation of nicknames, which has been adapted to suit the type of data sampled. Three research questions have been posed, which, in view of other studies related to this field of research (e.g. Ellison et al. 2006, Scheidt 2001, Chester & Gwynne 1998, etc.) have been examined to obtain information about the degree of anonymity and the topic-relatedness of nicknames used in chatrooms. The results show that users participating in synchronous CMC indeed follow topic-related rules for self-presentation and that anonymity has varying importance in different chatrooms.</p>