<p>The purpose of this study was to investigate if any linguistic differences between the sexes can be found in Swedish students’ compositions in English. My aim was also to investigate what features students perceive to be typically male or female. By studying a number of Swedish students’ English compositions, I was able to detect differences between boys’ and girls’ language and also compare my discoveries with earlier research. I investigated both the features that separate the genders in their writing and also what students identified as female and male language use. In my investigation, I found some linguistic differences between the sexes which were more distinct than others; for example their use of stative and dynamic verbs. But, on the other hand, I found no noticeable difference between boys’ and girls’ use of adjectives; words which are often said to be more commonly used by girls.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>The purpose with this essay is to get an insight on how the school has changed over the past years in terms of reading- and writing difficulties/dyslexia. In the literature studies I mention reading- and writing difficulties and the reasons why some people get these problems. Further on in the literature study it is written about what the education act and the curriculum say about the school’s duties towards pupils in need of special support.</p><p>The result contains interviews with one language pedagogue and one special pedagogue who work in two different municipalities. In addition I interviewed two former pupils who went to school 15-20 years ago.</p><p>I came to the conclusion that today’s schools have changed to the better for the pupils with difficulties. During the 1990’s the problems around dyslexia was getting attention in the society. This made the school more aware about reading- and writing difficulties/dyslexia and gave them more knowledge about the difficulties.</p> / <p>Sammandrag</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att få en inblick i hur skolan har förändrats under de senare åren vad gällande elever med läs- och skrisvårigheter/dyslexi. I litteraturgenomgången tas läs- och skrivsvårigheter/dyslexi upp och vad det finns för bakomliggande orsaker till varför vissa personer får dessa svårigheter. Vidare står det om vad skollagen och läroplanen säger om skolans skyldigheter till att hjälpa elever i behov av särskilt stöd.</p><p>Undersökningen som behandlades i resultatet omfattade intervjuer med en språkpedagog och en specialpedagog som är verksamma i två olika kommuner samt intervjuer med två före detta elever med dyslexi som gick i skolan för cirka 15-20 år sedan.</p><p>Resultatet av undersökningen visade på att dagens skola har förändrats till det bättre för elever med dessa svårigheter. Under 1990-talet uppmärksammades dyslexiproblematiken i samhället vilket gjorde att skolan blev mer medveten och fick kunskap om läs- och skrivsvårigheter/dyslexi.</p>

<p>High school students of today frequently come into contact with the English language through</p><p>radio and television. Many students even manage to read instruction manuals and understand</p><p>how technical devices work, such as, for example, computer games. However, most teachers</p><p>underestimate their students’ ability and persist in using Swedish to explain how the English</p><p>language works. I have analysed how high school students manage when they take an English</p><p>grammar test in English. My results show that the students manage very well. Learning is</p><p>rather about the meta cognitive ability of the students which, is what both teachers and</p><p>students should spend more time on in order to achieve successful learning.</p>

<p>Research has shown that children who have English as a first language acquire grammatical morphemes in a predictable order. Many researchers claim that second language learners also follow a predictable pattern when learning English grammatical morphemes regardless of their linguistic background, and that the same mechanisms are responsible for both first and second language acquisition.</p><p>The aim of this paper was to study Swedish students’ knowledge of English grammatical morphemes, and to compare their knowledge with that of second language learners from other countries as well as with that of first language learners.</p><p>The results show that Swedish students seem to acquire morphemes in a similar way to that of second language learners in general and that they make errors similar to those made by first language learners. For example, the copula was almost fully acquired, while the third person regular and irregular constituted a problem for the students. The most notable exception was the possessive ´s, which Swedish students seem to acquire at an early stage compared to other second language learners.</p>

<p>In Sweden we come in contact with the English language almost daily; in television shows, radio commercials and at work. English is also mandatory in the Swedish curriculum; therefore it is important that the students learn as much as possible in school, to be able to use English in their daily life. Teachers use different methods to help students acquire the tools needed to learn English, or any other subject for that matter. One method is oral feedback, which is used to immediately encourage students or correct them when making an error. My aim in this study is therefore to investigate if students find oral feedback in the classroom valuable and if not, how they would like it to be changed. To investigate this I handed out a questionnaire to five classes. The questions were divided up into three categories: if the students had noticed oral feedback being given to them, what their experiences of oral feedback were and how they would like the feedback to be delivered. I also made observations and recorded three classes. The results of this investigation showed that the students were positive to oral feedback in the classroom. Most of the students had noticed oral feedback being given to them, and the teachers had mostly corrected the students’ grammar and pronunciation. These were also the areas where the students felt they had developed the most from oral feedback. In the questionnaire the students pointed out that they wanted the feedback to be delivered privately and that the teachers have to be careful how they give the feedback, they have to always remember to give positive feedback as well as corrective feedback.</p>

<p>Mitt syfte med denna uppsats är att studera tre elevvårdskonferenser för att först se om deras innehåll överensstämmer med vad Cilla Lindblom Larsson skriver om utvecklings-samtal på grundskolan, att de handlar om pojkarnas skolbeteende och de råd och anvis-ningar pojkarna får där är moraliserande och tillrättavisande, och sedan undersöka hur samtalsstrukturen ser ut i dessa konferenser.</p><p>I arbetets första del undersöker jag vad dessa elevvårdskonferenser handlar om och kommer fram till att det rimmar illa med vad styrdokumenten avser - samtalen är inte dialogiska eller demokratiska och man pratar inte om kunskapsutveckling utan om upp-förande.</p><p>När jag jämför mina resultat med den bild Lindblom Larsson gett av utvecklingssamtal på grundskolan kommer jag fram till att innehållet i två av elevvårdskonferenserna (1 & 2) stämmer helt överens med vad hon påstått.</p><p>I den tredje elevvårdskonferensen (3) ser det annorlunda ut. Där tillrättavisar man inte pojken för dåligt uppförande, men tio av femton omdömen ligger i vad jag kallar gråzo-nen. De är tvetydiga och kan uppfattas som uppförande lika väl som kunskap. Jag påpe-kar att det kan betyda att Cilla Lindblom Larsson även skulle ha funnit att elevvårdskon-ferens 3 bekräftar hennes resultat eftersom pojken i elevvårdskonferens 3 just kan ha upp-fattat gråzonsomdömena som anmärkningar på hans beteende snarare än på kunskaper. Som jag ser det är dock den tredje elevvårdskonferensen (3) ett ”bättre” samtal, eftersom det där, i jämförelse med de andra samtalen, förkommer dialog och en positivare sam-talston.</p><p>I arbetets andra del studerar jag samtalens struktur och finner att alla tre elevvårdskon-ferenser liknar institutionella samtal. Jag visar med exempel hur de asymmetrier som dy-ker upp i institutionella samtal även finns i dessa samtal och visar med exempel vilka härskartekniker som förekommer i dessa samtal. Allt detta gör jag för att visa att en kon-sekvens av att lärare inte får utbildning i hur man för goda utvecklingssamtal i vissa fall kan resultera i att deltagarna i dessa inte samtalar på lika villkor.</p> / <p>In this essay I analyse three student care conferences to see whether their content agrees with what Cilla Lindblom Larsson is writing about student care conferences in high school; that they talk about how the boys are behaving at school and the advice and rec-ommendations given are moralizing and rebuking, and secondly study how the conversa-tional structure looks in this discussions.</p><p>In the first part I study what is the main topic of this student care conferences and I find that it does not agree with what is advocated by the directions in the school documents; this talks are not dialogues nor democratic. Neither are they about the development in knowledge of the student thus about the lack of manners of the student instead.</p><p>When comparing my research findings with that Lindblom Larsson describes of student care conferences in high school I find that the substance in two of the conferences (1 & 2) totally agree with her statement.</p><p>In the third conference (3), however, the conditions are quite different; there they don’t talk to rebuke the boy for lack of manners, but nevertheless ten out of fifteen of the teacher opinions end up in what I have named the grey zone. The teacher opinions are ambiguous and can be seen as statements concerning behaviour just as well as knowl-edge. I do point out that due to this ambiguousness Cilla Lindblom Larsson might also have found that the content of the third conference also confirms her result since it is not unlikely that the boy in the third conference did see the teacher opinions I put in the grey zone as remarks concerning his lack of manners rather than his lack of knowledge. As far as I am concerned, in spite of this ambiguousness, the third conference (3) is a more suc-cessful conversation all together simply because in that conversation, in comparison with the other two, dialogue do occur and the talk is held in an atmosphere of positive cordial-ity.</p><p>In the second part of this essay I examine how the conversational structure looks in this discussions and I find that all three of these student care conferences resemble of institu-tional conversations. I show how the distorted balance of power that appears in institu-tional conversations appears in these conversions as well and I exemplify the incidence of ruling skills.</p><p>The whole lot I do to show that the outcome, of a student care conference which is lead by a teacher who has not been properly educated in how to conduct the kind of dialogue intended for this type of conversions, might be that the conditions under which the par-ticipants take part in the discussion are not equal at all.</p>

<p>The Emancipation of Celie: The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to study The Color Purple as a Bildungsroman, focusing on the development of the protagonist, Celie. The Color Purple is related to both the traditional Bildungsroman and to the female Bildungsroman, but the essay shows that it can also be seen as a womanist Bildungsroman. Initially, Celie believes that being a woman inescapably means that she has to serve and obey men and she is oppressed by patriarchy. She is eventually introduced to another way of living by the strong female characters of Sofia and Shug who embrace her in a kind of sisterhood, which is vital for Celie as she has nothing else to help her liberate herself from the patriarchal values that keep her down. In conclusion, this essay shows how Celie has developed from being a young girl, forced to act in an adult way, into a woman who displays signs of all the criteria for having achieved a womanist development: she is grown up (not just acting as though she is), she is in charge of a business, a house and, in short, her life. She is serious, she has a universalist perspective, and most importantly, she loves. Furthermore, the essay highlights which characteristics of her development can be linked to the traditional and the female Bildungsroman and which characteristics can be seen as typical of a womanist Bildungsroman.</p>

<p>There are mainly two ways of comparing adjectives in English: the analytic and the synthetic. The analytic way is to use more and most (for example difficult, more difficult, most difficult). The synthetic, or inflectional, way is to add the endings –er and –est (for instance fast, faster, fastest). During the last twelve centuries the way of forming comparisons in English has evolved from predominately synthetic to the point where both inflections and analytic forms are used. Today many adjectives are almost always compared either synthetically or analytically (e.g. fast and difficult respectively), but sometimes we have two alternatives; for example, we can choose between more polite and politer. The author has three aims with this paper: firstly, to examine how adjectives in English are compared today; secondly, to determine how well the descriptions in modern grammars agree with authentic written English; thirdly, to see whether there have been any recent changes in the way of indicating comparison. This is a quantitative study. A corpus investigation was undertaken: some one hundred common adjectives in two British newspapers, The Guardian and The Observer, from 1990–91 and 2005 that vary in their way of expressing comparison were studied. The results were compared with six grammars from the last five decades. After the data collection, the chi square test was applied, showing how statistically significant the changes between 1990–91 and 2005 are. Judging from the data in this study, the synthetic comparison seems to be becoming less common. The author also concludes that the comparison of adjectives in contemporary British English varies considerably.</p>

<p>Det engelska språket har sedan efterkrigstiden haft en allt större inverkan på svenskan, bl.a. genom att vara det främsta långivande/lånförmedlande språket. Med dessa nya lån följer ofta svårigheter att anpassa orden till svensk grammatik. Målet med min uppsats har varit att undersöka hur engelska inlånade substantiv böjs i plural på svenska: vilka böjningsformer som används, huruvida engelsk eller svensk böjning används oftare, vad försvenskad stavning har för betydelse för pluralböjningen, och om språkbrukare upplever pluralböjningen som något problematiskt. För att besvara dessa frågor genomfördes en undersökning av språket i bloggar samt en enkätundersökning. En lista med inlånade engelska substantiv från 1990 eller senare sammanställdes utifrån Nyordsboken – Med 2000 nya ord in i 2000-talet och användes som material till bloggundersökningen. Enkäten utformades med fokus på ordpar med både svensk och engelsk stavning, och ställde också frågan om informanterna undviker att använda pluralformer av de undersökta substantiven. Enkätundersökningen genomfördes bland två grupper: studenter och språkvårdare. Resultaten visade att majoriteten av substantiven i mitt material böjdes med den engelska pluralformen –s och bland de ord som böjdes med svensk pluraländelse dominerade –er, följt av –ar och –or. En kombination av engelsk och svensk pluralform förekom i ord som bimbosar och logosar. Det fanns flera indikationer på osäkerhet inför pluralböjning, t.ex. flera olika böjningsvarianter, reaktioner på enkäten, och språkvårdarnas oenighet. Anpassning till svensk stavning hade stor inverkan på böjningen i plural och verkar vara en bra strategi för att integrera engelska lånord i svenskan. Informanterna i enkätundersökningen tenderade att undvika ord med engelsk stavning mer än de med svensk stavning.</p>

<p>Syftet med följande studie är att ta reda på vad som ligger till grund för ett välfungerande klassrumssamtal i gymnasieskolans svenskundervisning och på vilket sätt samtalet har en funktionell roll. Vi studerar hur samtalet går till och hur den talaktivitet ser ut som äger rum i klassrummet mellan lärare och elever.</p><p>Studien består av samtalsinspelningar genomförda under två olika svensklektioner med två olika klasser och lärare. Inspelningarna har senare transkriberats och analyserats. Vi följer ett helklassamtal och ett mindre gruppsamtal, där vi studerar hur talaktiviteten ser ut mellan lärare och elever. Genom en enkätstudie studeras bland annat lärares och elevers inställningar till samtalen.</p><p>Resultatet visar att i helklassamtalet var läraren en tydlig ledare och upptog den största delen av taltiden. I gruppsamtalet har eleverna nästan lika många ord som läraren, vilket visar att eleverna klarar av att leda ett samtal på egen hand. Både lärare och elever efterfrågar diskussioner i svenskundervisningen, det vill säga att alla är delaktiga och att det blir ett dialogiskt klassrum. Båda lärarna anser att det förekommer problem med tystlåtna respektive pratsamma elever. För att förebygga detta bör man som lärare skapa samtalssituationer där alla får lika stort utrymme, exempelvis diskussioner i mindre grupper. En av lärarna i undersökningen menar att det bästa sättet att hålla igång ett samtal är att ställa bra och engagerande frågor som berör så många som möjligt.</p>