<p>Peer response is a method which is widely used on higher levels of second-language learning in Sweden, such as universities. The approach is not used as much in upper secondary school; and, the aim of this paper is to investigate upper secondary students' opinions of the value of peer response. The aim is also to investigate if the teacher's grading differed between the first version of a text and the final vesrion that had been revised after peer response.</p><p>Research has shown that there seems to be more negotiation of meaning when students are working collaboratively and this can lead to better revisions of written texts, especially in terms of content development. On the other hand, collaborative writing can also create anxiety in some students who therefore dislike peer response. This investigation has shown that students taking part in the investigation are generally positive towards the approach. They also believe that giving and receiving feedback can help them improve their writing. There are, however, a few students who dislike it and want the texts to be read only by the teacher. The investigation has also shown that students mainly focus on formal aspects such as spelling and grammar when giving feedback to each other, whereas content was rarely commented on. Moreover, the results have shown that many of the students' grades improved on the final version compared to the first version. In conclusion, this investigation indicates that peer response could be used as an alternative, or complement, to ordinary teacher-student feedback in upper secondary school.</p>

<p>Idioms are found in every language and learning them is an important aspect of the mastery of a language. The English language is no exception as it contains a large number of idioms, which are extensively used. However, because of their rather rigid structure and quite unpredictable meaning, idioms are often considered difficult to learn. Although little research has been done to date on the nature of idioms as well as how they are used, a better understanding of variations in idioms can nevertheless be acquired by looking at some theories and thoughts about their use and their structure.</p><p>The aim of this paper is to examine a number of animal idioms, focusing primarily on English idioms and the similarities and differences found in equivalent Swedish idioms, even when the Swedish idioms do not contain an animal. Two types of studies are presented. In the first one, the English and Swedish animal idioms collected are grouped into four categories. The results of such a categorization show that half of the English animal idioms found have an equivalent in Swedish containing an animal. In the second study, the content, structure, wording, semantics and metaphorical meaning of the animal idioms are analysed and compared. The results indicate that the Swedish animal idioms that correspond to the English animal idioms have, for the most part, the same structures and similar variations in degree of literalness, fixity, manipulation and transformation. Furthermore, the use of metaphor, personification and simile appears to be common both in English and Swedish animal idioms. The role of context and literal and figurative translation are also addressed in this study.</p>

<p>The present dissertation is concerned with the social organization of emotions in talk-in-interaction. Conversation analytic procedures were used to uncover the practices through which participants in social interaction convey, understand, enact, and utilize emotions that are made relevant to the interaction. The central aim is to describe such practices and the contexts in which they are deployed, and to link emotions to the social actions that they perform or contribute to performing within situated activities. Conversation analytic work has generally not addressed emotions explicitly for reasons discussed in the dissertation, and a second aim was therefore to test the applicability of conversation analysis to emotion research, to theoretically bring together separate fields of inquiry, and to discuss advantages and limitations of a talk-in-interactional approach to emotions. Furthermore, the analytic approach to emotions is restricted to displays and orientations that are made relevant by participants themselves.</p><p>Data consists of video recordings of six graduate school seminars at a large university in the United States, as well as interviews with all 22 participants. From the analyses, three themes emerged; "frustration", "embarrassment", and "enjoyment", and within each, an assortment of practices for doing emotions were found. Frustration was primarily located in the context of violations of activity-specific turn-taking norms. Embarrassment was found to do multiple interactional work; for example, in contexts of repair, teasing, and culturally delicate matters. Enjoyment was found to be collaboratively pursued between and within institutional activities; for example, through reported speech dramatizations, utilization of activity-transitional environments, and playful 'mock' emotions. Timing of gaze aversion, laughter, and gestures were also found to be key to the display and perception of emotions.</p><p>The findings indicate that emotion displays can be viewed as transforming a situated action, opening up alternative trajectories for a sequences-in-progress, and also function as actions in themselves. Furthermore, it was concluded that conversation analysis is indeed a fruitful empirical route for understanding emotions and their role in social interaction.</p>

<p>All languages have words that are considered taboo – words that are not supposed to be said or used. Taboo words, or swearwords, can be used in many different ways and they can have different meanings depending on what context they appear in. Another aspect of taboo words is the euphemisms that are used in order to avoid obscene speech. This paper will focus on x-words, words like the f-word or the c-word, which replace the words fuck or cunt, but as the study will show they also have other meanings and usages.</p><p>The purpose of this paper is also to investigate the significance of taboo words and their usage in English, as well as research on how they are used, or not used, in media. The aim is to examine how x-words are used in the British newspapers the Guardian and the Observer by using corpus searches.</p><p>The results show that there are several ways of using x-words, and that using them in order to show that a word either is taboo, or has become taboo in a certain context, is the most common way. It is also clear that x-words can represent many different words, and not only words that are generally considered taboo.</p>

<p>C-paper Abstract</p><p>Title: Fluidity and Solidity in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping</p><p>Author: Linda Lindqvist</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to show that fluidity and solidity constitute a central tension on all levels in Housekeeping, and how this tension leads to a choice of either a fluid or a solid lifestyle and view of the world. I focus on fluidity and solidity in gender roles, in memories, in dreams, in nature, and in different perceptions of reality. By taking a closer look at Ruth’s first-person narration (seeing fluidity as not resisting deformation, while solidity resists deformation), we find that the characters in Housekeeping have fluid and solid traits, but that there is no reality that allows mixed manifestations of these. This results in repression of either fluidity or solidity, which creates tension and feelings of loss. Ruth chooses a fluid lifestyle, thus her memories and dreams become mixed with her present, and this also leads her to become a transient, outside gender roles and traditional small town society. Transience in this novel questions all distinctions conventionally made between dream and reality; male and female. In conclusion, this essay highlights how tension between fluidity and solidity is generated on all levels in Housekeeping, and how this leads to either fluid or solid lifestyles since the characters follow a cultural code that dictates a choice between them.</p>

<p>English spelling is without a doubt a complicated matter, and learners around the world have trouble getting the letters right. My aim in this paper is to investigate what words are particularly difficult to spell for Swedish students in the ninth grade, what they think about spelling and English as a subject in general, and how important they consider correct spelling to be. In order to find this out, I distributed a questionnaire in two classes at secondary school. According to my study, a large number of the students find it important to spell correctly, and they also believe that their teacher would agree. A high percentage of the participants are positive towards studying English. Their most common way of getting in contact with English on a regular basis is via TV and movies. 97% of the students wrote that TV was their biggest source of contact with English. The results show no differences in spelling skills between the sexes and neither did the origin of the parents have any effect. The respondents find both Swedish and English spelling easy, but a number of frequently misspelled words have been identified.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>Chained Thoughts Broken by Chains of Thought</p><p>An Analysis of the Narrative Style Used in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to analyse the narrative style used in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in order to show in which ways it supports and reinforces the author’s arguments in her quest for a more equal society. One of the most prominent stylistic means applied by Woolf is her ‘train of thought’, linking one reflection to another like wagons in a railway convoy or like loops in a chain (therefore also sometimes referred to as ‘chain of thought’ in dictionaries). By examining how different rhetorical devices are applied within this train or chain of thought and in which ways these strategies are linked to the main elements of persuasion (ethos, pathos and logos) in Aristotelian Rhetoric, I have found that one of Woolf’s central themes - the resentment against confinement and the advocacy of androgyny or mixed-gendered thinking - is mirrored in her style. It reflects the author’s call to resist society’s restrictions by its unrestricted combination of different rhetorical strategies; this mixture of stylistic, partly gender-neutral devices helps her to create a common ground where she can reach and appeal to both genders in a very effective and innovative way, thus enabling her chain of thoughts to break some of our chained thoughts.</p><p>Ellen Johansson</p><p>Engelska C</p>

<p>Syftet med detta arbete är att komma med ett inlägg i diskussionen kring datorspel och spelandet av desamma. Detta genom att försöka påvisa att datorspelande har en inverkan på svenska elevers inlärning av det engelska språket. För att nå mitt mål genomförde jag kvalitativa intervjuer med lärare och elever på en skola vars undervisning är inriktad mot grundskolans senare år. Huvudsyftet med intervjuerna var att samla in information för att kunna föra en relevant diskussion kring datorspelandets inverkan på inlärning av engelska.</p><p>Resultatet visar att eleverna upplever det som att den mesta engelskan de lär sig snarare kommer från datorspelen än undervisningen i skolan. Många av eleverna tror dock att lärarna inte tycker om datorspel, men menar att det nog bara är för att de inte förstår vad det handlar om. Lärarna förstår dock nyttan av att spela datorspel på fritiden, samt har en övervägande positiv inställning till datorspel. En lärare upplever att spelande elever generellt sett är duktiga på engelska och tar till sig det engelska språket på ett annat sätt än andra elever. Ytterligare en lärarröst menar att elever som spelar har ett mer flexibelt och berikat språktänk, samt öppnar upp sitt sinne på ett friare sätt i jämförelse med sina klasskamrater.</p> / <p>The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to the ongoing debate on computer games. My aim is to show that playing computer games affect the Swedish students’ acquisition of a foreign language, such as English. The method I used was qualitative interviews carried out on teachers as well as students at a school in the upper level of Compulsory School. The main purpose of these interviews was to gather subjective thoughts and attitudes from teachers and students to be able to lead a relevant discussion on computer games and how playing them affects the acquisition of a foreign language.</p><p>My results show that the students experience that they learn more English by playing computer games than during their English lessons. Many of the students also think that the teachers are not at all fond of computer gaming, but conclude this to be due to the teachers’ lack of experience. The teachers, however, do understand how the students benefit from playing computer games in their spare time, which leads to a predominantly positive attitude towards computer games amongst the teachers in this study.</p>

<p>The paper's aim is to show the fight of the church against the Potter book series of Joanne K. Rowling and the actual situation which is presented in the books. This fight is based on the acrimonious claims and heated-up discussions which were made by some church members who sued the books as "being evil" and a "seduction to the bad side" for children as well as "having a satanic content" etc. At the same time, positive comments of several church leaders and the author's declared opinion are stated. Finally, book four "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is interpreted regarding the claims of the church and a neutral observation of the story.</p>

<p>Learning a second language is different from learning our first one. A lot of rules from the first language, concerning e.g. grammar, intonation and phonology, are so firmly rooted within learners that they will transfer them to the new language regardless of whether they are correct or not. Studies show that the way we are tuned in to the sounds of our first language can make it difficult for us to perceive the phonemes of a new language correctly. In order to study the relationship between Swedish speakers’ faulty production of English vowels and their perception of them, ten subjects participated in a perception test to find out how well they could distinguish between minimal pairs containing phonemes that Swedes often have problems pronouncing correctly. They were also recorded while reading sentences containing the same minimal pairs. The results from the perception test were compared to graphs showing how consistent the subjects were in their pronunciation of these phonemes. The study shows that although some phonemes proved to be more difficult for the subjects to perceive a difference between, a faulty production of these sounds cannot be explained by misperception alone.</p>