Syftet med denna studie var att belysa vilka motivationsstrategier som lärare som undervisar i engelska för årskurs 4-6 använder sig av, samt vilka aktiviteter som lärarna anser mest motiverande för eleverna. Studien baseras på intervjuer med sex lärare verksamma i år 4-6, som alla undervisar i engelska och materialet analyserades sedan med hjälp av en tematisk analys.  Resultatet visar att lärarna ansåg att nivåanpassade uppgifter är den strategin som de upplever motiverar alla elever. Detta eftersom nivåanpassade uppgifter får elever att känna sig kompetenta och att de kan lyckas i skolan. Känslan av att lyckas i skolan ansåg lärarna vara betydelsefull för alla elever och en viktig faktor för att de ska vara motiverade till att vilja lära sig ännu mer. Utöver nivåanpassade uppgifter ansåg lärarna att undervisning som utformas med hänsyn till elevernas intressen upplevs som motiverande. Resultaten visar även att det är viktigt att klassrumsklimatet är positivt och accepterande. Lärarna i denna studie menar att ett sådant klassrumsklimat främjar elevernas lärande och motivation. / The present study focuses on the motivational strategies used by primary school teachers in their English classes as well as the tasks they find the most motivational for the students.  This study is based on interviews with six primary school teachers who teach English in grade 4-6, and the data was processed with the help of thematic analysis.   The results show that teachers motivate students by adjusting the tasks according on the students’ proficiency level in order to make the students feel more competent. By doing so the teachers argue that the students will feel more confident knowing that they can be successful in school, which will result in increased motivation. The results also highlight the importance for teachers to get to know their students and their interests. When creating learning activities based on the students’ interests, the teachers have seen an increase in the student motivation. Another crucial factor regarding students’ motivation is the classroom environment. The results also indicate that a positive and accepting classroom environment is beneficial for the students’ learning processes and for their motivation.

The aim of the research is to explore the differences in final energy consumption and environmental impact of the construction materials related to the atrium alternative and a business-as-usual and evaluate how to improve thermal properties of old buildings that require renovations to fit thermal efficiency standards and comfort in operational conditions while reducing the overall impact of the projects. Results show that for the low-rise atrium most of the parameters related to the final energy demands and environmental impacts of the atrium construction materials are proportional and linear to the increase of the glazing area size. When compared to simply renovating old structures, the atrium alternative can promote a decrease in thermal losses by transmission and increase in incident solar radiation through the glazed area depending on the atrium dimensions and glazing area size. And although cooling, heating, electrical and ventilation demands are raised for the overall demand of the building the construction of an atrium bears less environmental impact than renovating old structures damaged by weather. / <p>2021-04-08</p>

Many people with dyslexia find second language learning difficult (Gallardo, et al., 2015; Csizér, et al., 2010; DiFino &amp; Lombardino, 2004; Simon, 2000). A language with a deep orthography has little correspondence between the spelling of a word and its pronunciation, and is said to cause a higher degree of faulty decoding by people with dyslexia (Lindgren &amp; Laine, 2011; Rontou, 2012). English is one of the languages with the deepest orthography (Seymour, Aro &amp; Erskine, 2003). In contrast, one study has found that some exceptional dyslectics read with greater ease and correctness in English compared to their mother tongue Swedish (Miller Guron &amp; Lundberg, 2000). The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about how young adults with dyslexia have experienced learning English in primary and secondary school. It is a retrospective study with two participants, whose life histories are in focus. The research questions for this study are: -          What themes arise in the participants’ life histories, concerning the connection between dyslexia and second language learning in English? -          What perspectives of special education have pervaded the English teaching that the participants took part in? -          In which ways were the participants included in the English teaching that they took part in, seen from three aspects of inclusion: spatial-, social- and didactic inclusion? Firstly, the results show that despite having very different experiences of dyslexia and learning English in primary and secondary school, certain common themes arise when cross-analysing the participants’ life histories: -          Support at home and in school affects the motivation for learning English -          English is more difficult to learn compared to other school subjects -          Lower self-esteem/self-worth -          The need for repetition and time for learning English Secondly, the results show that it was mainly the compensatory- and critical perspectives that pervaded the teaching of English that the participants took part in. Only to a minor extent was the dilemma perspective noticeable. Finally, the results show that one of the participants mainly experienced two aspects of inclusion, spatial- and social inclusion, throughout primary and secondary school. Although, one specific teacher managed to include the participant according to all three aspects of inclusion. The other participant, on the other hand, did not experience being included according to any of the aspects. The participants of this study have shown that learning English is definitely a possibility for a person with dyslexia. However, it has not been a walk in the park for either of them but has required a lot of hard work and feelings of distress along the way.

Abstract This empirical study investigates how students in secondary school 7-9 learn the English language outside of school, in an informal setting, and how they can benefit from it in a formal setting in school. The usage of digital technology is more common nowadays amongst youngsters than it used to be before. Digital technology has become a part of young people’s daily lives, whether it is for social media, schoolwork, gaming or blogging. Most students in Swedish secondary schools have their own computers, mobile phones, and have the opportunity to borrow an iPad from school, if needed. For this reason, it is relevant and interesting to investigate how students use their informal knowledge of English in a school setting, and how teachers take advantage of that knowledge. The research focused primarily on how the incorporation of extramural English can be used as a motivating factor for students to develop their English language in a formal setting. The results showed that students who are given the opportunity to use their previous knowledge in the classroom, appeared to be more encouraged to engage in classroom activities. They were also more motivated to work with the assignments handed to them. Teachers who involved students’ interests and previous knowledge in the classroom were experienced in the use of different media in the classroom and had good knowledge about students’ daily lives and experiences, something that helped them establish a positive teacher-student relationship. Keywords: extramural English, out-of-school English, teaching materials, motivation, informal- and formal settings, students’ perceptions.

Extramural English (EE) activities are activities in English that students spend time on outside of school. Previous studies have often concluded that EE activities have a positive effect on students’ English proficiency. The phrasal verb is a language feature which often causes problems for learners of English as a second language. Phrasal verbs are multi-word phrases whose meaning cannot be guessed by the learner, often causing them to avoid using them. This study investigates the phrasal verb usage among Swedish secondary school students and if it is possible to link the usage to level of engagement in popular EE activities. The source of data for this study is the Swedish Learners English Corpus (SLEC), which contains texts written by Swedish secondary school students. An important feature that makes this corpus suitable for this study is that the metadata contains information about time spent on EE activities among the students. The analysis of the phrasal verb usage is structured around a three-level analysis of phrasal verb constructions. Although some differences in the use were noted, the study shows that phrasal verbs are a language feature which is not affected by amount of time spent on EE activities to a significant extent. / Extramural engelska (EE)-aktiviteter är aktiviteter på engelska som elever spenderar tid på utanför skolan. Tidigare studier har ofta kommit fram till att EE-aktiviteter har en positiv effekt på elevernas engelska kunskaper. Frasverb är en språkfunktion som ofta orsakar problem för elever som studerar engelska som andraspråk. Frasverb är fraser som består av flera ord och vars betydelse inte kan gissas av eleven, vilket ofta får dem att undvika att använda dem. Denna studie undersöker användningen av frasverb bland svenska högstadieoch gymnasieelever och om det är möjligt att koppla användningen till hur mycket tid de spenderar på populära EE-aktiviteter. Datakällan för denna studie är ’Swedish Learners English Corpus’ (SLEC), som innehåller texter skrivna av svenska högstadie- och gymnasieelever. En viktig del som gör denna korpus lämplig för studien är attkorpusens metadata innehåller information om hur mycket tid som läggs på EE-aktiviteter bland studenterna. Analysen av användningen av frasverb-konstruktioner är uppbyggd kring en analys i tre nivåer. Även om vissa skillnader i användningen noterades, visar studien att frasverb är en språkfunktion som inte påverkas av mängden tid som spenderas på EE-aktiviteter i betydande utsträckning.

This document study aims to facilitate an understanding of the differences between the grading criteria for English 5, 6, and 7 (in Swedish upper secondary school) before 2021 and after. It also aims to facilitate an awareness of reactions to the changes among actors within the educational system. The study investigates Swedish documents published online by The Swedish National Agency for Education as well as Swedish articles including reactions from teachers, a professor, and a chairperson of a teachers’ union. The first part of the studied material contains documents showing the old and the new grading criteria as well as documents containing explanations of why the changes were made, from The Swedish National Agency for Education. The other part of the material consists of four articles from four different journals for educators, with reactions from a total of seven different people. The method of the study was content analysis. The results from the study show that aspects of knowledge and details were removed from the grading criteria. For example, the knowledge criterion of students using different strategies when listening and reading was moved to core content. The major reason for changing the grading criteria was to make them clearer. Opinions from a few of the people in the study were that the changes will not matter because they were not big enough and that the changes have not made the grading criteria clearer. However, several people thought that the grading criteria have become clearer, and one person thinks that they will help teachers to carry out a better overall assessment. / Denna dokumentstudie syftar till att underlätta förståelsen av skillnaderna mellan betygskriterierna för engelska 5, 6, och 7 (i svensk gymnasieskola) före 2021 och därefter. Den syftar också till att underlätta en medvetenhet om reaktioner på förändringar bland aktörer inom utbildningssystemet. Studien undersöker svenska dokument publicerade på nätet av Skolverket samt svenska artiklar inklusive reaktioner från lärare, en professor och en ordförande i ett lärarförbund. Den första delen av det studerade materialet innehåller dokument som visar de gamla och de nya betygskriterierna samt dokument som innehåller förklaringar till varför förändringarna gjordes, från Skolverket. Den andra delen av materialet består av fyra artiklar från fyra olika tidskrifter för pedagoger, med reaktioner från totalt sju olika personer. Metoden för studien var innehållsanalys. Resultaten från studien visar att kunskapsaspekter och detaljer togs bort från betygskriterierna. Till exempel flyttades kunskapskriteriet om att elever ska använda olika strategier för att lyssna och läsa till centralt innehåll. Det främsta skälet till ändringarna av betygskriterierna var att göra dem tydligare. Åsikter från några av personerna i studien var att förändringarna inte kommer att spela någon roll eftersom de inte var tillräckligt stora och att förändringarna inte har gjort betygskriterierna tydligare. Samtidigt tyckte flera att betygskriterierna blivit tydligare och en person tror att de kommer att hjälpa lärare att göra en bättre helhetsbedömning.

This thesis investigates the possibilities of conditionally generating English sentences based on keywords-framing content and different difficulty levels of vocabulary. It aims to contribute to the field of Conditional Text Generation (CTG), a type of Natural Language Generation (NLG), where the process of creating text is based on a set of conditions. These conditions include words, topics, content or perceived sentiments. Specifically, it compares the performances of two well-known model architectures: Sequence-toSequence (Seq2Seq) and Autoregressive (AR). These are applied to two different tasks, individual and combined. The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is used to assess the vocabulary level of the texts. In the absence of openly available CEFR-labelled datasets, the author has developed a new methodology with the host company to generate suitable datasets. The generated texts are evaluated on accuracy of the vocabulary levels and readability using readily available formulas. The analysis combines four established readability metrics, and assesses classification accuracy. Both models show a high degree of accuracy when classifying texts into different CEFR-levels. However, the same models are weaker when generating sentences based on a desired CEFR-level. This study contributes empirical evidence suggesting that: (1) Seq2Seq models have a higher accuracy than AR models in generating English sentences based on a desired CEFR-level and keywords; (2) combining Multi-Task Learning (MTL) with instructiontuning is an effective way to fine-tune models on text-classification tasks; and (3) it is difficult to assess the quality of computer generated language using only readability metrics. / I den här studien undersöks möjligheterna att villkorligt generera engelska meningar på så-kallad “naturligt” språk, som baseras på nyckelord, innehåll och vokabulärnivå. Syftet är att bidra till området betingad textgenerering, en underkategori av naturlig textgenerering, vilket är en metod för att skapa text givet vissa ingångsvärden, till exempel ämne, innehåll eller uppfattning. I synnerhet jämförs prestandan hos två välkända modellarkitekturer: sekvenstill-sekvens (Seq2Seq) och autoregressiv (AR). Dessa tillämpas på två uppgifter, såväl individuellt som kombinerat. Den europeiska gemensamma referensramen (CEFR) används för att bedöma texternas vokabulärnivå. I och med avsaknaden av öppet tillgängliga CEFR-märkta dataset har författaren tillsammans med värdföretaget utvecklat en ny metod för att generera lämpliga dataset. De av modellerna genererade texterna utvärderas utifrån vokabulärnivå och läsbarhet samt hur väl de uppfyller den sökta CEFRnivån. Båda modellerna visade en hög träffsäkerhet när de klassificerar texter i olika CEFR-nivåer. Dock uppvisade samma modeller en sämre förmåga att generera meningar utifrån en önskad CEFR-nivå. Denna studie bidrar med empiriska bevis som tyder på: (1) att Seq2Seq-modeller har högre träffsäkerhet än AR-modeller när det gäller att generera engelska meningar utifrån en önskad CEFR-nivå och nyckelord; (2) att kombinera inlärning av multipla uppgifter med instruktionsjustering är ett effektivt sätt att finjustera modeller för textklassificering; (3) att man inte kan bedömma kvaliteten av datorgenererade meningar genom att endast använda läsbarhetsmått.

Detta examensarbete utforskar uppfattningarna hos nyanlända högstadieelever inom undervisningen i engelska i Sverige och i sina hemländer. Samtidigt undersöks strategierna som eleverna beskriver att de använder för att förbättra och utveckla sina språkkunskaper i engelska. Teori som används för att analysera det insamlade materialet är Cummins modell om språkundervisning som fokuserar på språkets innehåll som berör och engagerar, kunskap om språksystemet och fokus på språkanvändning i tal, skrift eller andra representationer. Detta är en kvalitativ studie baserat på kvalitativa semi-strukturerade intervjuer med öppna frågor med fyra nyanlända högstadieelever. Studien resultat visade en positiv uppfattning av undervisningen i engelska bland nyanlända högstadieelever i jämförelse med deras hemländer när det gäller den påverkan av engagerade lärare och positiv klassrumsmiljö där det finns interaktion, samt användningen av målspråket och olika resursmedel på lektionerna. Trots detta framkom utmaningar och brister i undervisningen i Sverige, särskilt avseende ämnesinnehåll och engagemang. Elevernas önskan om mer varierade och intressanta övningar indikerar att lektionerna ibland saknar stimulerande innehåll. Bristen på efterföljande aktiviteter efter glosförhör kan hämma elevernas effektiva tillämpning av nya ord i olika språkliga sammanhang, vilket begränsar deras förmåga att skapa djupa kopplingar mellan ordförståelse, korrekt användning och grammatik. Denna brist kan också leda till en mekanisk inlärningsprocess och riskera att elever ser språket som en uppgift snarare än ett verktyg för meningsfull kommunikation. Elever använder olika strategier för språkutveckling, inklusive samarbete, interaktion och användning av modersmål för förståelse och digitala resurser.

This study offers insight into washback processes via interactions between the national test, teachers and students as well as raises questions about contemporary educational politics and standardized testing in EFL classrooms. Washback is a term for the effects a test has on teaching and learning. Standardized tests are given increased weight in Sweden and globally, risking an increase of washback. This development puts various properties of education at risk of being undermined. In Sweden, the national tests in ninth grade can be considered high-stake standardized tests since they should be particularly considered in grading. The oral subtest in English may involve specific issues due to socio-affective aspects and challenges of assessing foreign language speech. Through qualitative interviews with six English teachers in Sweden, this study explored their perceptions of washback effects of the oral subtest of English in the national tests in ninth grade. The results indicate substantial washback on teaching practices and learning behaviors, and that socio-affective aspects play a major role in teachers’ choices. Also, some teachers exhibit ambivalence to the content of the test and whether the test results should impact the grades.

This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature.