Research in language didactics shows that literary text can and should be exploited in foreign language teaching starting from beginner level. Nevertheless, high school teachers of French as a foreign language in Sweden tend not to incorporate the literary text into their teaching. The most commonly invoked reason is the language difficulty. In this work, we study the case of two teachers in Sweden and one teacher in Switzerland who use literary texts in French classes. The focus lies on the types of texts chosen, the tasks associated with the texts and the skills to be developed. The study is based on the qualitative method of semi-structured interviews which allows a detailed overview of the information. The analysis shows that the teachers choose the texts in relation to three different aspects: the subject, the length of the text and the difficulty of the language. Tasks differ depending on the students' level of acquisition, teaching objectives and classroom conditions. Oral and written production activities contribute to the development of different language skills, including pragmatic skills.

<p>Hösttermin: 2023–2024</p>

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The theories on ways to learn a second language have varied throughout history and existing research is often dependent on school settings to discover the best methods to motivate students. Removing the aspect of school from the equation, why would someone choose to learn English as a second language when the choice is independent of structures such as curriculum? What methods would the student choose to rely on for their learning if it is up to them? Through semi-structured interviews with natural learning, home educated, Swedish speaking students, this qualitative study examines the process of learning English as a second language. The findings suggest that learning English as a second language occurs as a natural progression rather than the goal-oriented learning in a class setting. The conclusion of the study is that learning occurs as a side effect from focusing on natural interests rather than structured methods.

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The purpose of this essay is to analyse the human-horse relationship in the first trilogy of Soul Riders, written by Helena Dahlgren. The metaphor 'centaur' is used as a central theme to discuss and analyse how the relationship can create a new body in relation to space and to John Dewey’s concept of 'Growth'. Supported by Jonna Bornemark's philosophical concept of the centaur, John Dewey's concept of growth, and Yi-Fu Tuan's concept of place, I aim to explore the young protagonist's understanding of their new body as they experience their everyday world, Jorvik, and the unknown magical world of Pandoria. Understanding the centaur as a concept that breaks with dualistic ideas about human and non-human, adult and child, body, and space as opposite binarities, I argue, results in a richer interpretation of the human-horse relationship as a complex communication between two subjects.  I argue that the narrative in Soul Riders supports the notion that horses (and other animals) should be considered as subjects on the same level as humans, and that no individual is superior to another. By understanding the obligations in the interaction with a horse, creating the centaur becomes achievable, and the young girls can grow in their role as adults and occupy a position in adulthood, without dismissing childhood. I analyse the centaur through the different perspectives of the horse as a subject, of childhood and adulthood, of the social environment, and of the experienced space. My conclusion is that a dissolution of the dualistic concepts is needed to better understand the human-horse body, the centaur, in the first trilogy of Soul Riders.

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Mazoor Ahtesham is a renowned writer in the modern Hindi literature. He is one of the fewMuslim voices in the modern Hindi literary canon.2 He gives a detailed picture of the Muslim society, which is undergoing a change within and, at the same time, is confronted by the change outside. Although, his cosmology is culturally Muslim, but his characters are like any other characters of the world literature. They go through the same torment of insecurity, helpless in the ever changing surrounding. Manzoor’s texts are complex, ornated and multi-layered. It takes time and passion to peal the layers after layers. The Tales of The Missing Man is his favourite novel, and he showed his mastery in structure and subject matter in this masterpiece. It is a metafictional mock memoir of a mock romance hero. It is called a metafiction because ‘’the novelist attempts to show the novel from the inside out so that the creative process itself is exposed’’. 3 The mock undertone keeps this structurally complicated novel in one piece. It novel may be named as a local topographical novel where the protagonist loses and finds peace in the space of the lake city Bhopāl.One may call it as author’s commentary on present India which goes through rapid metamorphoses. New supermarkets have been built at the site of the protagonist’s childhood heaven. Peaceful people have been forced to choose between the extremist’s opposites. There is less and less room for the peaceful go -between people who have been left behind from the progressive drive. They are fed with extremism and fanatism. The fanatics dismantle the multicultural, multireligious existence of India. The author propagates Sufism and disgustsany extremism which threatened the peaceful coexistence of the Hindu and the Muslim communities in India. It is interesting and as well as a great opportunity for the readers to share the Muslim perspective to look at the different political changes in India while they read the novel. The book must have been thought in Urdu but written in Hindi so the language in the book plays a significant role to place it in the Hindi mainstream literary canon. The tale of the bystander Zamir achieves a sense of belonging to the non-urdu readers through Hindi language. It is not exotic anymore but at the same time, it does not lose the attraction of the unrevealed. Grunebaum-Stark did not leave any stone unturned to present the best of this novel to the English readers. The language of the novel is smooth and easy and simultaneously, not feeble to bear the weight of the original language of the novel.Structurally, it is a circular novel. The readers start at the present and go through the memories and come back to the present again. The author does not give a definite answer but invites the readers to find their own answer.

This thesis explores how the cultivation of creative practices can contribute to positive responses inprocesses of world-making. It seeks to understand how an individual creative practice affects theperception and making of realities. Stemming from the answers sprung from the study of theproject; an explorative probe-inspired interview, the research project circles around the themes ofknowledge creation, caring, the ability to influence one’s own realities and the ability to stay withuncertainty and how these themes correlate to world-making for ”as good as possible”-worlds. Todeepen the understanding of how individual creative practices can affect world-making on a broaderscale three interviews with experts in the fields of world-making and transformation wereconducted. The material from the study is discussed together with the reflections from theinterviews against a background consisting of, amongst others, Martin Savransky’s, John Law’s andRobin Wall Kimmerer’s ideas of how worlds and knowledges are created. Maria Puig de laBellacasa’s notion of caring and Donna Haraway’s exhortation to ”stay with the trouble” tricklethrough the thesis as a red thread. A problematisation and a definition of the concept of creativityand creative practices are offered to clarify which kinds of creative practices and re-doings that cancontribute to ”as well as possible” worlds.