Voice-over translation (or “audio subtitles”) is the only audio-visual translation (AVT) used for feature-length films on Polish television. Since the reader (lektor) only partially overrides original dialogues and some parts of the actors’ speech are clearly audible, it can be considered as marginal L2 exposure. The aim of this study is to investigate the attitudes of Polish speakers of English towards voice-over translated television and to determine if TV shows and films with a lektor can be a source of incidental language acquisition. The study consists of two parts, a survey and an experiment. The survey investigated the attitudes of Polish speakers of English to different types of AVT, especially their opinions about the influence of voice-over translated TV shows on their English proficiency. The data reveals that Polish speakers of English have rather negative opinions about this AVT and numerous instances of unfaithful translation are easily spotted by them, which creates an image of unprofessional and inaccurate AVT. They seem not to consider films with a lektor as L2 exposure and tend to think that introducing subtitles to television would improve the L2 competence in Poland. However, the informants admitted being able to spot unfaithful translation, meaning that they pay attention to the foreign language in the background. The experiment was conducted to examine the possibility of incidental language acquisition from voice-over translated TV shows. 26 high school students, Polish learners of English watched 4 clips with voice-over translation with instances of unfaithful translation. The study has empirically proven that Polish learners of English are able to spot the differences between the original dialogue and its translation. Thus, watching voice-over television programming can be considered L2 exposure.

As a result of the increase of digitalisation in today’s society, the Swedish school system requires a certain degree of digital competence amongst teachers, affecting the foundation of how their teaching practice is structured. Therefore, this study aims to investigate to what extent Swedish EFL/ESL teachers in the primary years incorporate digital tools in their teaching practice, and more specifically how – and why – they are used to facilitate learners’ vocabulary acquisition/learning. In this qualitative study, five Swedish EFL/ESL teachers in the primary years participated. The five participants work at five different schools, in three different municipalities. The empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The results of these indicate that vocabulary drills, generally given as homework, are the primary method of teaching English vocabulary to the EFL/ESL learners, requiring them to learn consciously and intentionally. Moreover, the results imply that a variation of tasks and teaching tools, as well as a frequency in exposure of content, is necessary for beneficial vocabulary acquisition/learning. Further, it is evident that digital tools have a profitable effect on learners’ motivation and consequently their learning. Finally, it is clear that what matters when incorporating digital tools is how they are used, rather than that they are used.

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Reading enhancement strategies are an important tool utilized by foreign language teachers. One of the most common types of during-reading assistance is the marginal gloss, which provides first language (L1) translations of selected foreign language (L2) terms in the margins of a text. Glossing is an inherently individual approach to reading. It is predominantly motivation-driven, and provides as much assistance to the learner as he or she is willing to use it. Studies to this point have been largely inconsistent in regards to the exact usefulness of glossing, analyzing many variables such as the size, scope, and type of gloss, as well as the language read. The present study uses glossing while reading a text to investigate whether glossing helps L2 learners learn Chinese and/or helps with their long-term memory. The text was adapted from a pedagogical website for Western learners of Chinese, and the gloss comprised six of the most meaningful terms in the text. A total of 10 students learning Chinese as a foreign language participated in the present study. These beginner learners were divided into one of two groups, where the only variable was the presence or absence of a marginal vocabulary gloss. The participants were tasked with reading a short passage in Chinese while responding to comprehension questions in English. Group A read the text without the assistance of a gloss, while Group B read while using a gloss. Participants had access to the text (and gloss, if applicable) while working on the text. One week later, participants were tasked with remembering the meanings of the selected Key Terms which appeared in the passage. They were also asked to briefly summarize the text in as much detail as they remembered. In analyzing the responses of the participants after both Part 1 and Part 2, it was found that glossing provided minimal assistance in regards to vocabulary recall in the future, but did much more to aid in comprehension at the time of reading. In addition, L1 translations which appear in the gloss are more likely to be remembered than the L2 terms to which they correspond. Moreover, this study sheds light on various language acquisition theories, such as incidental vocabulary learning, involvement load, cognitive load, and Input Hypothesis. The results support the efficacy of glossing on during-reading comprehension through the aforementioned theories. Evidence of many of these theories of language processing are evident in the responses of each of the participants and will be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

Syftet med mitt examensarbete är att få svar på hur en grupp elever i årskurs 9 i tyska funderar över sin språkinlärning i tyska. Utgångspunkten för min kvalitativa undersökning i klassrummet är två texter från Skolverket (2022a) som kartläggningsmaterial i tyska i årskurs 9 för att utmana elevernas läsförståelse genom textläsning och textrelaterade frågor som är införda i det digitala verktyget Wordwall. Det är i grunden ett gratis digitalt verktyg och enkelt att använda i språkundervisningen. Som lärare skapar man innehåll i form av en eller flera Wordwall-aktiviteter kring det valda materialet. Målet med undersökningen är att eleverna ökar sitt ordförråd i samband med dessa texter och på det sättet får kännedom om vanligt förekommande uttryck i texterna. Genom textläsning kan eleverna lära sig nya ord i ett sammanhang som säkert upplevs mer meningsfullt än att endast plugga med hjälp av ordlistor. Huvudresultatet som framkommit i min studie är att eleverna uttryckte sig skriftligt om sina uppfattningar kring sin språkinlärning och Wordwallprojektet. Insikterna dokumenteras med hjälp av en kvalitativ utvärdering av elevernas enkätsvar för att belysa deras uppfattningar. / The purpose of my degree project is to get answers to how a group of Swedish students in grade 9 think about their language learning in German. The starting point för my qualitative investigation in the classroom are two texts from the Swedish National Agency for Education (2022a) as mapping material in German in grade 9 to challenge the students’ reading comprehension through text reading and text-related questions that are introduced in the digital tool Wordwall. It is basically a free digital tool and easy to use in language teaching. As a teacher, you create content in the form of one or more Wordwall activities around the selected material. The goal of the survey is for the students to increase their vocabulary in connection with these texts and in that way gain knowledge of commonly occurring expressions in the texts. By reading texts, students can learn new words in a context that is certainly perceived to be more meaningful than studying only with the help of word lists. The main result that emerged from my study is that the students expressed themselves in writing about their perceptions regarding their language learning and the Wordwall project. The insights are documented using a qualitative evaluation of the students’ survey responses to illuminate their perceptions.

Vocabulary is a crucial component for language acquisition and EFL lessons are often dictated by the usage of textbooks and workbooks. The current study therefore aims to investigate how effective textbooks are in helping learners acquire high, mid, and low-frequency words as well as to what degree high and mid-frequency words are repeated throughout the textbooks. Additionally, the study explores the types of exercises presented in the EFL teaching materials, with a particular focus on the extent to which they promote learners' active engagement and use of the vocabulary presented. The findings suggest that EFL teaching materials could benefit from more comprehensive and systematic approaches to vocabulary instruction, which emphasize the active use and recycling of high and mid-frequency words in meaningful contexts. The present study recommends that teaching materials and EFL teachers incorporate more varied and interactive exercises that promote learners’ active engagement and use of the target vocabulary. Additionally, the study uses corpus-based methods to investigate the frequency level of text bodies compiled from EFL textbooks targeting sixth-grade pupils in Sweden. Furthermore, the accompanying workbooks are examined to establish the types of exercises pupils are exposed to through their use. In addition, the study suggests that teachers using the included teaching materials should incorporate additional vocabulary exercises in their EFL instructions to promote the repetition of words found in the textbooks.

The study explores the degree to which readers can use their previous linguistic knowledge, which goes beyond the immediate evidence in the input, to create mental representations of new words and how the employment of this knowledge may reduce the fuzziness of the new representations. Using self-paced reading, initial representations of novel identical forms with different grammatical functions were compared in native German speakers and advanced L2 German learners with L1 Czech. The results reveal that although both groups can employ general knowledge about German grammar when establishing new representations, the L1 native speakers outperform the L2 learners: Their new representations have more precise structure and are better differentiated from related representations with respect to their grammatical information. Modeling consequences of these findings are discussed in the context of the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation and the Fuzzy Lexical Representation Hypothesis.

Incidental vocabulary learning is a form of acquiring new words without having a specific intention in the acquisition, and it can occur in or out of the educational frame (Hatami, 2017). In the digital age, incidental vocabulary acquisition is increased as learners encounter and assimilate new words through different online platforms and technological tools. The study was conducted by searching digital databases ERC and ERIC using keywords such as "EFL," "L2," "reading," "listening," "viewing," and "watching" over 15 years (2008-2023). The studies that focus on traditional strategies or word frequency over incidental learning were excluded. Consequently, the results include diverse locations and learners and aim to capture a comprehensive view of incidental vocabulary learning.  This study explores the efficacy of incidental vocabulary learning modes—reading, listening, and watching—in an English as a foreign language classroom, considering the influence and the role of digitalization. While reading appears as the most potent mode of input for incidental vocabulary acquisition, listening and viewing also contribute significantly, but not as significantly as reading. Moreover, combining reading with listening has the most multifaceted approach and superior results in incidental vocabulary learning for foreign language educators. However, due to the lack of research on specific age groups and diverse situations, further studies are needed to explore various student types and effective methods for learning new vocabulary, particularly in Swedish schools.

Manual signs are an augmentative and alternative communication mode which enables and facilitates communication for persons with impairments in speech, language and hearing. There are different ways of teaching signs to persons with intellectual disabilities. One of them is milieu teaching, which is a method where the teaching takes place in natural settings. This method has proven to give good results in generalization and maintenance. Teaching signs to staff in groups has been shown to be effective. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether sign intervention affected the number of signs and the number of different signs, used by two persons with Down’s syndrome and eleven staff on a day center. The study was carried out as a single-subject design. A sign intervention was conducted at the day center with the two participants with Down’s syndrome. They were educated individually with a procedure inspired by milieu teaching. When the intervention with the two participants was terminated, the staff was educated in a group format. The number of signs and the number of different signs used by the two participants with Down’s syndrome and the staff were registered. The sign intervention with the two participants led to an increased use of signs for one of them and the sign intervention with the staff led to an increased use of signs for the staff together with one of the participants. The main reason for why the sign intervention was effective for one of the two participants with Down’s syndrome and for one group of staff, but not for the other participant or the other group of staff, seems to be that the participants use of signs had an impact on each other. One of the participants with Down’s syndrome and one group of staff seems to have had a positive impact on each others use of signs. The intervention also seems to have been too short and therefore has not given effect for all of the participants.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions l'effet de l'auto-sélection des salariés sur l'estimation de la productivité, des différentiels de salaires et de qualité du travail entre les secteurs. Afin de prendre en compte l'auto-sélection des employés dans l'estimation des différentiels le long de la distribution des salaires, nous construisons une approche innovante composée de trois caractéristiques: (i) nous nous intéressons aux effets par quantile inconditionnel; (ii) nous incorporons des effets fixes spécifiques à chaque quantile; (iii) nous proposons une méthode de correction de l'incidental parameter bias. Cette approche permet de produire des résultats exploitables en terme de politiques publiques. Nous montrons dans un premier temps que la sélection positive dans le secteur public tend à se dégrader. Elle disparaît totalement en haut de la distribution des salaires dans la période récente, suggérant un effet négatif du gel des salaires nominaux. Dans notre deuxième article, nous mettons en évidence une sélection négative substantielle dans le secteur informel concernant les hommes et les bas salaires. Cette sélection négative apparaît à la suite de la Grande Récession, indiquant une réallocation des salariés les moins productifs vers le secteur informel. Dans le dernier article, nous montrons pour la période récente que le niveau de productivité des SCOP n'est pas significativement différent de celui des autres entreprises. Nous confirmons l'hypothèse selon laquelle les motivations non-pécunières des employés expliquent une partie importante de la productivité des SCOP dans deux des secteurs étudiés (secteur manufacturier et secteur des transports). / This PhD thesis studies the effect of workers' self-selection when estimating productivity, wages and job quality differentials between sectors. In order to account for the self-selection of employees in the estimation of differentials along the wage distribution, we develop an innovative approach comprising three features: (i) we rely on unconditional quantile effects ; (ii) we incorporate quantile-specific fixed effects; (iii) we suggest a treatment of the incidental parameter bias. This method allows to provide public policies relevant comparisons. We show first that the positive selection into public jobs tends to decline. It totally disappears among top earners in the recent period, suggesting the detrimental effect of nominal wage freeze. In the second paper, we unveil that there is a substantial negative selection into informal salary work for men on average and particularly at low wages. It arises in the wake of the Great Recession, pointing to a shakeout of less productive workers in the formal sector. In the last paper, we account for employees' non-pecuniary motives in our comparison of the productivity of labour-managed firms and other for-profits company. We confirm for the recent period and on a large scale that the SCOP total factor productivity level is not significantly different from the other firms'. We find also results that support the hypothesis that employees non-pecuniary motives accounts for a substantial part of French labour-managed firms productivity in two of the three industries studied (manufacturing and transports).