I grundlärarutbildningen för förskoleklass och årskurs 1–3 undervisas om musikens positiva inverkan och hur musik kan användas som ett pedagogiskt verktyg i svenska. Trots detta upplever jag att musik och rytm användas enbart i gruppstärkande syfte under den verksamhetsförlagda utbildningen. Det tvåfaldiga syftet med denna studie är dels att bidra med kunskap om hur lärare i F-3 uppfattar och beskriver arbetsmetoder med musik och rytm som ett medierande och språkutvecklande verktyg, dels hur lärare uppfattar och beskriver sig ha verktyg och kompetens för att använda musik och rytm i undervisningen. Syftet avsågs besvaras genom forskningsfrågorna: Hur uppfattar och beskriver lärare att de arbetar med musik och rytm i klassrummet som ett språkutvecklande verktyg under svenskundervisningen? Hur uppfattar och beskriver lärare att de har verktyg och/eller kompetens för att använda musik och rytm i undervisningen? Studien utgår från det sociokognitivistiska perspektivet och genom teorin redogörs för hur musik och rytm kan användas som ett verktyg för språkutveckling. Undersökningen använder en kvalitativ dataanalys och semistrukturerade fokusgruppsintervjuer. Resultatet visar att lärarna uppfattar och beskriver musik och rytm som ett medierande verktyg för språkutveckling i svenskundervisningen samt huruvida lärarna anser sig ha kompetens att använda musik och rytm som ett språkutvecklande verktyg i svenskundervisningen. Studiens informanter var två förskollärare, två grundskollärare med inriktning 1–7 samt två grundskollärare med behörighet att undervisa i musik och svenska. Alla lärare är verksamma i grundskolans förskoleklass till årskurs 3. Resultatet visar att lärarna till stor del använder sig av rytm och musik men på olika sätt utifrån vad lärarna själva beskriver att de är bekväma med. / In the basic teacher education for preschool class and grades 1-3, the positive impact of music is taught and how music can be used as a pedagogical tool in Swedish. Despite this, music and rhythm are perceived to be used only for group strengthening purposes during the company-based training. The twofold purpose of this study was partly to contribute knowledge about how teachers in F-3 perceive and describe working methods with music and rhythm as a mediating and language development tool, and partly how teachers perceive and describe themselves as having tools and skills to use music and rhythm in teaching. The purpose was intended to be answered through the research questions: How do teachers perceive and describe that they work with music and rhythm in the classroom as a language development tool during Swedish teaching? How do teachers perceive and describe that they have the tools and / or competence to use music and rhythm in teaching? The study is based on the sociocognitivist perspective, and the theory describes how music and rhythm can be used as a tool for language development. The survey uses a qualitative data analysis, and based on semi-structured focus group interviews. The results show how teachers perceive and describe music and rhythm as a tool for language development in Swedish teaching and whether the teachers consider themselves competent to use music and rhythm as a language development tool in Swedish teaching. The informants in the study were two preschool teachers, two primary school teachers with a focus on 1–7 and two primary school teachers with the right to teach music and Swedish. All teachers are active in the compulsory school pre - school class for year 3. The results show that the teachers largely use rhythm and music, but in different ways according to what the teachers themselves describe that they are comfortable with.

<p>This work presents two studies of language processing and development in children. The first study focuses on passive sentence comprehension in 4-5-year-old children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and same-age peers with typical development (TD). We explore the effect of animacy, morphosyntactic, vocabulary, and event probability cues on children’s offline comprehension and online processing of passive sentences using an eye-tracked looking-while-listening design. The children were first exposed to short videos of agents doing characteristic actions (e.g., hard physical activities or passively observant activities). The children then engaged in an eye-tracked online processing task in which they heard reversible and nonreversible passive sentences describing events that matched or did not match the characteristics set up in the exposure videos. During these sentences, images on-screen were displayed that corresponded to the potential interpretations of the sentence. Online processing data was collected using eye tracking. After each sentence, the children were asked to point to the image corresponding to their interpretation to measure their offline comprehension. The offline comprehension data indicated that compared to the children with TD, the children with DLD were less likely to correctly interpret the passive sentences and made comprehension errors that suggested poorer attention to and integration of potentially informative sentence cues. The eye-tracked online processing data was examined in two ways. First, we analyzed the online processing data to determine to what extent the children’s processing was consistent with the use of the sentence cues. We found that the children in the two groups were just as likely to demonstrate looking patterns consistent with the use animacy cues but children with DLD were less likely to use morphosyntactic, vocabulary, and event probability cues. We then analyzed the online processing data in correctly interpreted sentences only to examine how the sentence cues were integrated over the course of the sentence. We found that in correctly interpreted sentences, children with DLD demonstrated a slower, less robust response to most of the informative cues in the sentences but quicker and less linguistically mediated use of event probability cues. Finally, we examined the relationship between the children’s use of event probability cues and their stimuli-specific vocabulary knowledge but found no strong associations. </p><p><br></p><p> The second study focuses on the semantic network structure of the vocabularies of young 18-30-month-old children and its influence on noun and verb learning. Prior work had examined how noun semantic network structure affects noun learning. Here, we extended that work to ask how noun and verb semantic network structures differ in their influence on noun and verb learning. We examined vocabulary network structure at the word, semantic neighborhood, and lexicon levels in a large sample of child vocabulary checklist data using semantic features. We analyzed the data in three ways. First, we charted the relationship between verb and noun semantic network structure and vocabulary size across children. We found that early-learned nouns tended to have strong network relationships with other nouns and other verbs across network levels. We also found that early-learned verbs tended to have strong network relationships with other nouns but, in contrast, were unlikely to have strong relationships with other verbs. Next, we examined patterns of normative vocabulary development, asking whether the cross-sectional patterns seen in the first analysis influenced the time at which nouns and verbs tended to be learned. We found similar patterns. Nouns with strong semantic connections to other nouns and other verbs tended to be learned early. Verbs with strong semantic connections to other nouns tended to be learned early but verbs with strong semantic connections to other verbs tended to be learned later. Finally, in an effort to determine how the very earliest vocabulary knowledge sets the stage for later word learning, we examined how word knowledge gaps formed and were filled by nouns and verbs in normative vocabulary development. These gaps corresponded to structured “cavities” in the semantic networks. We found that nouns tended to form semantic cavities that were later filled by nouns and verbs, reinforcing the findings from the first analyses that early noun knowledge is a prerequisite for later verb learning. </p>

Studiens syfte är att skildra hur förskollärare ser på sin roll i att stötta barnens språkutveckling i samband med lärandet om kemiska processer. Undersökningarna genomfördes med hjälp av pedagoger som arbetade på förskolor i fem kommuner i Mellansverige. I studien har en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ metod använts i form av enkäter och intervjuer. Enkäternas del i studien var att få en bred förståelse inom vilka kemiska processer som genomförs i förskolan. Intervjuerna genomfördes för att fördjupa studien inom de områden som framkom från enkäterna. Detta för att sedan ha möjligheten att diskutera och analysera resultatet kopplat till studiens frågeställningar och syfte. Resultaten åskådliggör att pedagogerna anser att de har en viktig roll i kemiska processer och har stor betydelse för utvecklingen av barnens vokabulär. Genom att vara aktiv som pedagog i en kemiaktivitet stimuleras barns språkutveckling då pedagogen kan tillföra fler begrepp vid den kemiska processen. Pedagogerna var också eniga om att aktiva och närvarande pedagoger stimulerar språkutvecklingen hos barnen i alla aktiviteter i förskoleverksamheten. I studien uppenbarades även att pedagogerna tycker att det är viktigt att benämna det som sker med rätt begrepp i aktiviteterna, redan med de allra yngsta barnen. / The purpose of the study is to describe how preschool teachers view their role of supporting children in their language development, in connection with learning of chemical processes. The study was conducted with the help of educators who worked at preschools in five municipalities in Central Sweden. In the study, a qualitative and a quantitative method was used in the form of questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaires part in the study was to gain a broad understanding of which chemical processes are carried out in preschool. The interviews were conducted to deepen the study in these areas that emerged from the questionnaires. This is to then have the opportunity to discuss and analyze the results linked to the study's questions and purpose. The results illustrate that educators believe that they have an important role in chemical processes and are of great importance for the development of children's vocabulary. By being active as an educator in a chemistry activity, children's language development is stimulated as the educator can add more concepts to the chemical process. The educators also agreed that active and present educators stimulate the language development of the children in all activities in the preschool activities. The study also revealed that the educators think it is important to name what happens with the right concept in the activities, already with the very young children.

Syftet med den här studien är att uppmärksamma boksamtalets potential i förskolan. Förhoppningen är att bidra med kunskap om det, samt att uppmärksamma utmaningarna som följer. Studien har genomförts genom kvalitativa intervjuer på fyra olika förskolor med fem utbildade förskollärare. Dessa förskollärare arbetade med barn i åldrarna ett till fem år. I intervjuerna fick de besvara frågor utifrån en intervjuguide, där de hade stor frihet att utveckla sina svar.  Studiens resultat visar att informanterna har stor kompetens i allmänhet, men att den specifika kunskapen om boksamtal eventuellt skulle behöva fördjupas. Studiens resultat visar bland annat att den vuxnes förhållningssätt och atmosfären i förskolan är viktiga beståndsdelar vad gäller barns språkutveckling och lärande. Studien pekar mot att det skulle behövas en tydligare styrning på organisatorisk nivå för att fördjupa kunskapen om boksamtalets olika aspekter. / The purpose of this study is to draw attention to the potential of the book conversation in early childhood education. To contribute with knowledge about it and to pay attention to the challenges that follow. The study has been conducted through qualitative interviews at four different preschools with five trained preschool teachers. These preschool teachers worked with children between the ages of one and five. In the interviews, they answered questions based on an interview guide, where they had great freedom to develop their answers.  The results of the study show that the informants have great competence in general, but that the specific knowledge of book conversation might need to be deepened. The results of the study show, among other things, that the adult's attitude and atmosphere are important parts of children's language development and learning. The study indicates that a clearer governance at the organisational level would be needed to deepen the knowledge, around the book conversations.

This paper speculates about the origin of the overall use of the form iko in Inland Swahili. Its functional scope comprises predication, identification, location, existence, and association. In Standard Swahili, the primary function of iko is to express the locative relation of nouns belonging to noun class 4 or 9. For the expression of identification various other means are used. As Inland Swahili is mostly acquired as a second language it will be argued here that the functional expansion of iko might be due to the crosslinguistic influence of the first language. However, first languages, such as Maasai, exhibit a formal distinction between location and predication. A conceptual merger of both functions in the second language is more likely to occur when the first language contains only one obligatory copula expressing both concepts. This obligatory copula can be found in many Indo-European languages, e.g. English or Hindi. Until today Indians speaking Swahili are characterised by the frequent usage of iko, a fact which points to the view that the overall use of iko could be due to substrate influence of Hindi.

No description available.

The purpose of the current study is to shed light on how preschool teachers work to stimulate the mother tongue of multilingual children and develop second language learning. The theoretical starting point in the study is the intercultural perspective. To answer the purpose of the study, a survey was conducted of which 60 respondents are included in the data analysis. The results of the study show that the respondents who participated in the survey work with multilingual children's mother tongue and second language learning in several different ways and they have a positive view of mother tongue teaching and its impact on second language learning. According to the study's participants, it appears that there are various challenges in the work with children's multilingualism, such as a lack of knowledge in mother tongue teaching and second language learning. There were several different resources that are used in the work, but also what resources the preschool teachers lack in the work with mother tongue teaching and second languages. Finally, the results of the study show that there is a certain lack of knowledge about how the educator should promote the child's mother tongue and second language. According to the preschool teachers, there is a lack of competence development and a lack of time for working with the child's multilingualism. / Syftet i den aktuella studien är att belysa hur förskollärare arbetar med att stimulera flerspråkiga barns modersmål samt utvecklar andraspråksinlärningen.  Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i studien är det interkulturella perspektivet. För att besvara studiens syfte genomfördes en enkätundersökning varav 60 respondenter inkluderas i data analyseringen. Studiens resultat visar att respondenterna som deltog i enkätundersökningen arbetar med flerspråkiga barns modersmål och andraspråksinlärning på flera olika sätt och har positiv syn på modersmålsundervisning och dess påverkan på andraspråksinlärning. Det framkommer enligt studiens deltagare att det finns olika utmaningar i arbetet med barns flerspråkighet som bristande kunskap inom modersmålsundervisning och andraspråksinlärning. Det framkom flera olika resurser som används i arbetet men också vilka resurser som förskollärarna saknar i arbetet med modersmålsundervisning och andraspråk. Slutligen visar studiens resultat att det finns en viss brist på kunskap kring hur pedagogen ska främja barnets modersmål och andraspråk. Det framkommer enligt förskollärarna en saknad av kompetensutveckling och brist på tid för arbetet med barnets flerspråkighet.

Children learn their first language simply by listening to the linguistic utterances provided by their caregivers and other speakers around them. In order to extract meaning and grammatical rules from these utterances, children must track regularities in the input, which are omnipresent in language. The ability to discover and adapt to these statistical regularities in the input is termed statistical learning and has been suggested to be one of the key mechanisms underlying language acquisition. In this thesis, I investigated a special case of statistical learning, non-adjacent dependency (NAD) learning. NADs are grammatical dependencies between distant elements in an utterance, such as is and -ing in the sentence Mary is walking. I examined which factors play a role in the development of NAD learning by illuminating this process from different stand points: the first study compares NAD learning in the linguistic and the non-linguistic domain during the earliest stages of development, at 4 months of age. This study suggests that at this age, NAD learning seems to be domain-specific to language. The second study puts a spotlight on the development of NAD learning in the linguistic domain and proposes that there may be a sensitive period for linguistic NAD learning during early childhood. Finally, the third study shows that children can not only recall newly learned NADs in a test immediately following familiarization, but also recall them after a retention period, which is critical to show more long-term learning. Overall, the findings in this thesis further illuminate how NADs, as a spotlight into language acquisition, are learned, stored in memory, and recalled.

Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen om förskollärares perspektiv på sitt arbete med digitala verktyg för att stimulera barns språkutveckling. Studien är kvalitativ och insamlingen av den empiriska datan genomfördes genom tre semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre förskollärare i varje grupp. Respondenterna kom från fyra olika kommuner för att öka studiens tillförlitlighet. Resultatet som den insamlade datan gav, analyserades utifrån ett sociokulturellt och utvecklingspedagogiskt ramverk samt tidigare forskning inom området. Följande frågeställningar har använts för att kunna uppfylla studiens syfte; Hur använder förskollärare digitalisering för att utveckla barnens språk?, Vilka argument har förskollärare för att arbeta med digitala verktyg i syfte att stimulera barns språkutveckling?. I resultatet framkommer vilka metoder förskollärarna använder sig av för att stimulera barns språkutveckling med hjälp av digitala verktyg. Vidare synliggörs förskollärarnas argument för varför de använder sig av digitala verktyg i verksamheten. I resultatet framgår att det finns en stor variation av digitala verktyg att tillgå i förskolanmen de som är mest förekommande är iPads och projektorer. Förskollärare i svenska förskolor är positivt inställda till användning av digitala verktyg då de är ett stöd för att nå målen samt ger möjlighet att erbjuda ett varierat innehåll i verksamhetens undervisning. Resultatet visar även att det inte spelar någon roll vilket digitalt verktyg barnen använder då det är det sociala samspelet, kommunikation och interaktion runt verktyget som utmanar och stimulerar barnens språkutveckling.

This empirical study is about preschool teachers reasonning around the work with language development among multilingual children who have swedish as a second language and encounter swedish only after they start preschool. Based on the above, we had two research questions. Question 1. How do preschool teachers reason around planning language development? Question 2. What mediating resources do preschool teachers use to support the language development of multilingual children? To be able to answer the questions, semi-structured interviews were conducted where we interviewed six preschool teachers from multicultural preschools. To process the data we have used thematic analysis method. The material was then analysed using five theoretical concepts from sociocultural perspective and these are the proximal development zone, support, mediation, interaction and artefacts. The survey shows that observation, documentation and language mapping form the basis for a systematic planning of language work. Mediating resources that have emerged in the survey are image support, TAKK, digital tools, polyglutt application and children's literature.