The purpose of my study is to examine how four teachers in a pre school believe they relates to and reasons about bilingualism. To be able to realize thisstudy, i proposed three issue following: How do the teachers in kindergarten relate to bilingualism? How do teachers in preschool reason around the work of bilingual children? What do teachers think about the educational environment in relation to language development?

The purpose of our study is to interpret and understand the experiences that parents to multilingual children have towards multilingualism in pre-school. We are also interested in finding out what these parents think about their children’s development in multilingualism both in pre-school and at home.   Our study is based on qualitative interviews. We interviewed nine families that have multilingual children in pre-school.  The data we collected from our interviews has been analyzed using socio-cultural and inter-cultural theories along with previous research.   The result of our study showed that parents to multilingual children have both positive and negative opinions about the multilingual concept. Most of our informants had positive opinions about multilingualism in general. At the same time they all had concerns about what multilingualism can do for the linguistic development of their children. Because of the negative opinion our parents have towards multilingualism in pre-school, everyone but one parent said that they would decline the possibility for their child to participate in mother tongue or first language activities in pre-school. We reach a conclusion that one important thing that needs to improve in order for these parent not to worry about their children’s linguistic development is the collaboration between pre-school and the parents.

Huvudsyftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur förskollärare arbetar med flerspråkiga barn i förskolan. Jag valde att använda mig av en kvalitativ intervjumetod, då jag ville ha pedagogernas resonemang och åsikter. Båda förskolorna som jag har varit på och gjort mina intervjuer på visar att pedagogerna visar ett stort intresse genom sin nyfikenhet av att lära sig ord och fraser på barnens olika språk. Pedagogerna tar sin hjälp genom att de använder sig av föräldrarna för att få tillgång till ord och fraser som hjälper pedagogerna i verksamheten. Det är övervägande bland pedagogerna att de uppmuntrar barnen om att prata sitt modersmål även på förskolan med varandra, pedagogerna påpekar även hur viktigt det är att föräldrarna pratar sitt modersmål hemma med barnen. Pedagogerna vill att varje barn ska känna stolthet över sitt ursprung, språk och kultur. Förskolorna använder sig av sång, musik och sagor, de delade även in barnen i smågrupper för att alla ska få komma till tals. Ladberg skriver om att sagor är ett bra och rikt material där barnen lär sig nya ord. Hon poängterar även att det är bra att dela in barnen i smågrupper där barnen är ungefär i samma språkliga nivå. Barn som inte förstår ledsnar och tappar koncentrationen, ger upp ”stänger av” för språket. Sagor läses bäst i smågrupper (Ladberg 2003, s. 157, 158). Resultatet visar att pedagogerna visar ett förhållningssätt som bygger på en nyfikenhet hos pedagogerna, lyssnar, samtalar och forskar tillsammans med barnen. Pedagogerna ger barnen en delaktighet genom att plocka fram barnens läroprocesser och utveckling genom läroplansmålen (Lpfö 98 reviderad 2010, s. 9, 10). / The main purpose of this study was to look how preschool teatchers work with multilingual children in preschool. I chose to use a qualitative interview method, since the teachers reasoning and opinions were at value. That was my interest in this study. Both preschools that I have been to and done my interviews at show a great interest by their curiosity to learn words and phrases in different languages. The teachers use the children´s parents for access for new words. It is predominant among the teachers to encourage the children to speak their mother tongue with each other in preschool, and the teachers also point out how important it is that the parents speak the mother tongue at home with the children. The teatchers wish is that every child should feel proud of their origin, language and culture. The preschool used song, music and fairy tales and they also divided the children into smaller groups so everyone could have their say. Ladberg describes how fairy tales are a good and abundant material were the children learn new words. She also points out that it´s good to divide the children into differnet small groups were they´re approximately at the same level. Children who don´t understand become sad and lose their concentration, give up ”shut down” the language. The best way is to read fairy tales in small groups (Ladberg 2003, s. 157, 158). The difficulty to work with multilingual children is that the teachers sometimes don´t know if the children understand what teachers are saying. The result shows that the teachers show an approach, which is based on curiosity of the teachers and listen, converse, and do research togheter with the children. The teachers give the children participation by bring out children´s processing of learning and development by the goals of the curriculum (Lpfö 98 2010, s. 9, 10).

This study is a qualitative action research that I have undertaken with four teachers in the college where I work, for the purpose of improving curriculum delivery and student services to our majority multilingual student body. Based on my research in a public school board with Grades 4 to 12 students where I learned that mother tongues (L1s) are valued by students as scaffolds to their learning of English (L2) I proceeded to explore L1/L2 curriculum delivery with adult community college students whose prior learning is encoded in their mother tongues. I explored the possibility of legitimizing the use of students’ mother tongues in college classrooms as scaffolds to their acquisition of their L2. There were three phases to this study. Through these three phases of the study I sought to understand the impact of this multilingual pedagogical approach on the students’ learning experience, academic engagement and identity formation. In phase 1, I worked with 90 English as a Second Language (ESL) students whom I surveyed to determine their levels of understanding of our English-only curriculum delivery and student services. In phase 2, I worked with three English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students and interviewed them to explore their reaction to their teacher’s allowing them to use their mother tongues in class as part of pedagogy. In phase 3, I worked with 19 EAP students and interviewed them in focus groups to explore more deeply their learning experience, academic engagement and identity formation in two college classrooms where their mother tongues were part of everyday pedagogy. On the basis of the findings of this study I argue that the creation of space for students’ mother tongues in college classrooms is an ethical imperative since their mother tongues are integral components of their identities and all of their prior learning and life experiences are encoded in their mother tongues. Overall the findings highlighted bilingual students’ perceptions that their L1s constituted an important scaffold for their learning of English. Students’ comments also expressed their sense of the centrality of L1s to aspects of their identity.

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Minority languages, bilingualism and linguistic integration among youth have gained a great dealof attention in research especially in times of migration, globalization and other activities crossingthe borders of nation-states. In this thesis the aim is to investigate different meanings associatedwith the mother tongue when this language is another than the majority language in the place ofresidence. This task is approached from a social geographical perspective. In the study, the termmother tongue is used in its widest sense, mostly defined by the choice of the informant. In the introduction the concept mother tongue is on the one hand, looked upon and discussedin terms of a minority language in regard to the nation state and on the other, seen as a bordercrossing transnational speech community. In this way, a wide range of meanings can be illuminated.The analytical framework is discourse analysis, inspired by the work of Potter and Wetherellamong others, in the field of discursive psychology. The empirical data is made up by the transcriptsof semi-structured interviews with 13 students at two schools in the area of Stockholm,Sweden. The result of the study is presented as five interpretative repertoires, showing the mother tongueas (1) belonging, (2) background, (3) heritage, (4) carrier and (5) everyday practice. The fiverepertoires are later analyzed for their spatial content in four spatial contexts: the national, themulticultural, the transnational and the diasporic context. They are defined and used as discursivelandscapes in which the different meanings of the repertoires are identified. The five repertoires areidentified in all spatial contexts except for the national context. The findings show that the different meanings of the mother tongue represented by a certainindividual are negotiated in sometimes quite contradictive pieces of discourse. One implication isthat a specific meaning of the language does not equal an individual’s personal attitude or belief.The students seem to be very flexible in the association of different meanings to their mother tongue.The result further shows the value of a multi-scalar approach to investigations of the socialgeography of language. The ignorance of one social or spatial context will lead to the loss of a vitalpart of the language. This is crucial when discussing the mother tongue as a minority language oras a transnational speech community. Finally, there are reasons to be attentive of putting bilingualyouth in any social or spatial trap: national, multicultural, transnational or diasporic.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a neurogenic speech disorder that is characterised by deficits in the articulatory and prosodic domains of speech production. A range of physiologic assessment techniques have been employed in an attempt to elucidate the physiological underpinnings of articulatory and prosodic defects in AOS. However, despite the advancement of electromagnetic articulography (EMA), a technique that facilitates safe, non-invasive assessment of intra-oral structures, little research has investigated lingual kinematics during speech production in participants with AOS. Tongue-to-palate contact patterns, on the contrary, have been investigated in AOS. However, most of this research relied upon descriptive analysis, rather than instrumental techniques including electropalatography (EPG). Therefore, the present thesis aimed to utilise EMA and EPG to provide a comprehensive assessment of lingual movement and tongue-to-palate contact patterns during word-initial consonant singletons and consonant clusters, during mono- and multisyllabic words, in AOS. The strength of coupling between the tongue and jaw and tongue-tip and tongue-back was also examined, as was consonant cluster coarticulation. Five participants (three females and two males) with AOS and a concomitant non-fluent aphasia participated in the project. The mean age of the group at the time of the EMA assessment was 53.6 years (SD = 12.60; range 35 - 67 years). At the time of initial assessment, all participants were a minimum of 12 months post onset of stroke (M = 1.67 years; SD = 0.72). Perceptual analysis indicated that each of the five participants with AOS presented with the following mandatory characteristics: sound distortions, sound prolongations, syllabic speech output, and dysprosody. A control group of 12 neurologically unimpaired participants (8 male, 4 female; M = 52.08 years; SD = 12.52; age range = 29 - 70 years) also participated in the study. The apraxic speakers’ tongue-tip and tongue-back movements were initially profiled during monosyllabic word production using EMA. Movement duration, distance, maximum velocity, maximum acceleration and deceleration, and velocity profile index values were recorded during word-initial consonant singletons (i.e., /t, s, l, k/) and consonant clusters (i.e., /kl, sk/). Results indicated that the participants with AOS evidenced significantly prolonged movement durations and, in some instances, significantly greater articulatory distances, relative to the control group. All measures pertaining to speed appeared to be relatively unimpaired. Phonetic complexity had a variable impact on the articulation of word-initial consonants. The results were able to account for the overall slow rate of speech exhibited by the participants with AOS. In a subsequent study, EMA was employed to investigate the impact of increasing word length on lingual kinematics for five participants with AOS. Target consonant singletons and consonant clusters were embedded in the word-initial position of one, two, and three syllable words (e.g., tar, target, targeting). Movement duration appeared to be most sensitive to the effect of word length during consonant singleton production. However, word length effects were absent during consonant cluster production. The data were discussed in the context of motor theories of speech production. The final EMA investigation examined the strength of coupling between the tongue and jaw and tongue-tip and tongue-back during /ta, sa, la, ka/ syllable repetitions, in a group of five participants with AOS. In comparison to the control group, four participants with AOS exhibited significantly stronger articulatory coupling for alveolar and/or velar targets, indicative of decreased functional movement independence. The reduction in functional movement independence was thought to reflect an attempt to simplify articulatory control, or alternatively, a decrease in the ability to differentially control distinct articulatory regions. To complement the EMA data, EPG was employed to investigate the spatial characteristics of linguopalatal contact during word-initial consonant singletons (i.e., /t, s, l, k/) and consonant clusters (i.e., /kl, sk/) in three participants with AOS. Through the use of quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques, misdirected articulatory gestures (e.g., double articulation patterns), distorted linguopalatal contact patterns (alveolar fricatives), lingual overshoot, and for one participant, significantly greater spatial variability were identified in the linguopalatal contact data. Pattern of closure appeared to be relatively unimpaired during alveolar plosive and approximant productions, and lingual undershoot and true omission errors were absent. The results were discussed in relation to their impact on phonetic distortion. A subsequent EPG study examined the temporal and spatial aspects of consonant cluster coarticulation in three participants with AOS. Target stimuli included ‘scar’ and ‘class’. In contrast to what was expected, each of the participants with AOS appeared able to coproduce elements within a consonant cluster. Appropriately, pattern of linguopalatal contact did not appear to be influenced by coproduction. Amount of linguopalatal contact did differ significantly on occasion. Coarticulatory effects were appropriately absent for each of the participants with AOS during alveolar fricative production in ‘scar’; however, the control group and each of the apraxic speakers exhibited place of articulation assimilation during velar stop production. The control group and two participants with AOS produced discrete velar and alveolar articulations during ‘class’; one participant with AOS evidenced coarticulatory effects during the /kl/ cluster. The research findings indicated that consonant cluster coarticulation was generally maintained in word-onset position, and it was postulated that future research should endeavour to investigate consonant cluster coarticulation in consonant sequences that span a syllable boundary. The EMA and EPG research findings presented in this thesis inform about the underlying physiological nature of articulatory disturbances in AOS. These findings will be discussed in the context of contemporary theories of speech motor control.

Thesis (M.Sc.) (Honours) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 2001. / A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science (Honours) in the Centre for Advance [sic.] Food Research, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury Campus, July 2001. Bibliography : leaves 98-110.

Thesis (M. Sc.) (Hons.) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-186).