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This study analyses the textbook Veckans ord 5 by Britta Redin and Görel Hydén (2003), which is used as a teaching aid in Swedish as a second language. The aim is to examine the theories of vocabulary learning and the learning strategies revealed in the content and design of the textbook and thereby examine its functionality for Swedish L2 pupils. We use content analysis as a method and apply it to selected chapters in the book connected to vocabulary learning and how pupils are expected to consolidate the words they learn. The analysis also considers whether the exercises deal with the form of words (morphology, orthography, phonology) or their content (syntax, lexical field, synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms).   The result shows that the arrangement of the textbook agrees with some common theories and vocabulary learning strategies such as repeating words, linking them to synonyms and learning words through pictures. Another finding is that the exercises highlight the form of words more than their content and meaning.

Problemområdet jag fokuserat på i detta examensarbete är elevernas bristande läs och ordförståelse inom matematiken. Denna problematik kan ses i den dagliga undervisningen i klassrummen och elevernas svårigheter med läs, begrepp oc hordförståelse inom matematiken kan försvåra elevernas matematiska utveckling. Syftet med denna undersökning var att försöka bidra med kunskaper om lärare och elevers språk och lässtrategier i ämnet matematik. Jag var också intresserad av att undersöka om stödmallar används och i så fall på vilket sätt, av lärare på lågstadiet inom matematikundervisningen. Genom metoderna av att göra klassobservationer och korta efterföljande intervjuer av de undervisande lärarna kunde jag få insyn i olika klassrum. Med hjälp av enskilda observationer i problemlösning med och utan kontext kunde jag få ta del av hur några av eleverna använde och tog till sig matematikundervisningens olika former av ord och begrepp. Resultatet av denna studie visar klassrum med stor fokus på ord och begrepp som diskuteras och benämns med bildstöd i genomgångar. Här sågs även klassrum utan bildliga stödmallar men med muntliga stödstrukturer. Elever där flertalet har ett resonemang och delaktighet i klassrummens dialoger, men undersökningen visar också på elevernas svårigheter. Eleverna hade i de enskilda observationerna svårt att tolka uppgifterna, både genom att läsa samt med hjälp av hörförståelse. De matematiska vardagsordens betydelse i olika sammanhang och vanliga vardagsord ställde till det för elevernas förståelse. För att tydliggöra och befästa matematiska ord och begrepp behöver dessa förtydligas och upprepas och användas i den dagligen undervisningen. Att ge undervisningen stort fokus på att ”vanliga” ord har olika betydelser i olika sammanhang behöver utvecklas inom matematikundervisningen. Enligt Läroplanen för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet är det av stor vikt att eleverna får betydande möjligheter att kommunicera och diskutera matematiska begrepp och eleverna ges genom detta tilltro till sin språkliga förmåga. Eleverna ska ha vetskap om matematikens olika uttrycksformer och begrepp och kunna kommunicera i olika situationer.

This scoping review examines studies on the instruction of early literacy practices to pre-service teachers in teacher education programs. The research questions for this scoping review are: a) What are the major themes in the literature surrounding instructional strategies for early literacy in Bachelor of Education programs? and b) Are there any gaps in the existing literature? Six major education databases were systematically searched, which resulted in 16 articles. After conducting a thematic analysis of these articles, three themes were identified in the literature: B.Ed. program have needs that should be addressed, there are gaps in knowledge and content, and perceptions of pre-service teachers. An unexpected theme appeared during the exclusion process, which was the lack of studies on what pre-service teachers learn in B.Ed. programs regarding early literacy practices, and the high number of articles which study pre-service teacher’s perceptions, opinions, feelings, and beliefs about what they learn in B.Ed. programs, regarding early literacy practices. This demonstrates a gap in the literature and the need for further research on early literacy instruction in B.Ed. programs.

The study has three different aims. One is to investigate reading comprehension among pupils in grade 4. Another is to trace any difficulties in reading comprehension to linguistic or social difficulties. The study also has a practical purpose in that the problems that exist can be identified and diagnosed earlier so that these pupils can be given extra support. The pupils’ reading comprehension has been tested with texts from their schoolbooks. Three different types of questions have been asked about the content of the texts. The pupils’ decoding ability has been tested with a letter and word-chain test and word comprehension with words from their schoolbook texts. The pupils who were tested are in grade 4 in a school in southern Sweden. There are three classes with a total of 59 pupils, of whom 48 participated in the study. It turns out that there are deficiencies in reading comprehension in several pupils in grade 4. The pupils have great problems with questions which require them to read several lines before they find the answer and with questions where they have to draw their own conclusions and use previous knowledge they were expected to have.

The study investigated the effects of noise, one of the major environmental stressors, on speech perception and spoken word comprehension. Three tasks were employed – listening span, listening comprehension, and shadowing – in order to find out to what extent different types of background noise affected speech perception and encoding into working verbal memory, as well as spoken word comprehension. Six types of maskers were used – (1) single babble masker in English, (2) single babble masker in Mandarin, (3) multi babble masker in Greek and (4) construction site noise, (5) narrow-band speech signal emulating phone effect and (6) reverberated speech signal. These could be categorized as energetic (2, 3, and 4), informational (1) and signal degradation (6 and 7) noise maskers. The study found that general speech perception and specific word comprehension are not equally affected by the different noise maskers – if shadowing is considered primarily a task relying on speech perception, with the other two tasks considered to rely on working memory, word comprehension and semantic inference. The results indicate that informational masking is most detrimental to speech perception, while energetic masking and sound degradation are most detrimental to spoken word comprehension. The results imply that masking categories must be used with caution, since not all maskers belonging to one category had the same effect on performance. Finally, introducing a noise component to any memory task, particularly to speech perception and spoken word recognition tasks, adds another cognitively stimulating real-life dimension to them. This could be beneficial to students training to become interpreters helping them to get accustomed to working in a noisy environment, an inevitable part of this profession. A final study explored the effects of noise on automatic speech recognition. The same types of noise as in the human studies were tested on two automatic speech recognition programs: Otter and Ava. This technology was originally developed as an aid for the deaf and hard of hearing. However, their application has since been extended to a broad range of fields, including education, healthcare and finance. The analysis of the transcripts created by the two programs found speech to text technology to be fairly resilient to the degradation of the speech signal, while mechanical background noise still presented a serious challenge to this technology. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The study investigated the effects of noise, one of the major environmental stressors, on speech perception and spoken word comprehension. Throughout three different tasks (listening span task, in which participants were asked to recall a certain number of items from a list; listening comprehension task, in which listeners needed to demonstrate understanding of the incoming speech; and shadowing, in which listeners were required to listen and simultaneously repeat aloud the incoming speech), various types of background noise were presented in order to find out which ones would cause more disruptions to the two cognitive processes. The study found that general speech perception and specific word comprehension are not equally affected by the different noise maskers – provided that shadowing is considered primarily a task relying on speech perception, with the other two tasks considered to rely on working memory, word comprehension and semantic inference, or the way the listener combines and synthesizes information from different parts of a text (or speech) in order to establish its meaning. The results indicate that understandable background speech is most detrimental to speech perception, while any type of noise, if loud enough, as well as degraded target speech signal are most detrimental to spoken word comprehension. Finally, introducing a noise component to these tasks, adds another cognitively stimulating real-life dimension, which could potentially be beneficial to students of interpreting by getting them accustomed to working in a noisy environment, an inevitable part of this profession. Another field of application is the optimization of speech recognition software. In the last study, the same types of noise as used in the first studies were tested on two automatic speech recognition programs. This technology was originally developed as an aid for the deaf and hard of hearing. However, its application has since been extended to a broad range of fields including education, healthcare and finance. The analysis of the transcripts created by the two programs found speech to text technology to be fairly resilient to a degraded speech signal, while mechanical background noise still presented a serious challenge to this technology.

This study examines how teachers of Swedish as a second language perceive that they work to strengthen L2 pupils’ knowledge of Swedish. It investigates how the teachers say that they work to improve the pupils’ vocabulary and word comprehension, and what they can find problematic when they work with this. The method used for the study is qualitative, in the form of interviews, with the aim of charting the teachers’ opinions and perceptions of what was to be studied. Four teachers were interviewed, and their thoughts are part of the results in the study. Among other things, it was found that vocabulary and word comprehension are important to work with in Swedish as a second language since a large vocabulary and good word comprehension are the foundation for the pupils’ continued learning. The results also show the importance of conversations in the classroom when it comes to vocabulary and word comprehension, and the use of pictures and reading aloud.

<p> </p><p> </p><p>I föreliggande studie undersöktes ordförrådet (ordförståelse och benämning) hos 21 barn med hörselskada och 21 normalhörande barn i åldrarna 7-9 år, matchade till ålder, kön och bostadsort. Deltagarna delades även in i undergrupper med avseende på hörselskadans typ (ledningshinder, sensorineural skada samt kombinerad skada) och grad (lätt, måttlig, grav och döva/hörselskadade barn med CI) samt typ av skolform. Ordförståelse undersöktes med Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III och benämning undersöktes med Word Finding Vocabulary Test. Som förväntat hade gruppen med hörselskada lägre resultat på båda testen, men endast benämningstestet visade en statistiskt signifikant gruppskillnad (<em>p </em>= 0,002 jämfört med <em>p </em>= 0,054 för ordförståelse). För benämningstestet hade barn med hörselskada i 7-års ålder ett signifikant lägre resultat jämfört med åldersmatchad kontrollgrupp, medan skillnaden inte var signifikant i de äldre åldersgrupperna (8 och 9 år). Typ, grad, kön eller skolform (hörselklass kontra integrerad skolform) hade ingen signifikant effekt på något av testen, men samband kan inte uteslutas pga relativt få barn i varje undergrupp i denna studie. Explorativ analys av individuella åldersekvivalenta resultat för benämningstestet indikerade följande: (a) majoriteten av de hörselskadade barnen låg inom den nedre halvan av normalresultatet; (b) två barn med cochleaimplantat hade särskilt låga resultat; (c) deltagare med lätt hörselskada tenderade att ha sämre resultat än deltagare med grav hörselskada, vilket kan tyda på otillräckligt stöd vid lätt skada; och (d) en deltagare med måttlig hörselskada hade lika högt resultat som det högsta resultatet i kontrollgruppen.</p><p> </p><p> </p> / <p>This study examined the receptive and expressive vocabulary in 21 children with hearing impairment and 21 children with normal hearing between the ages of 7-9. The groups were matched in regard to age, gender and home district. The material was divided into categories of hearing impairment based on type (conductive, sensorineural and combined hearing impairment), severity (mild, moderate, severe and children with profound deafness/hearing impairment with cochlear implant) and children in hard of hearing classes versus children integrated in ordinary classes. The tests used were Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (word comprehension) and Word Finding Vocabulary Test (word production). As expected, the group of children with impaired hearing achieved lower results on both tests. However, only the result on the word production test was significant for children with hearing impairment (<em>p </em>= 0,002 compared with <em>p </em>= 0,054 for comprehension). 7 years old children with hearing impairment reached a significantly lower result on the word production test compared with their peers with normal hearing, whereas the difference between the groups of 8 and 9 years old children was not significant. Type, severity, gender or school placement (hard of hearing classes versus ordinary classes) had no significant effect on neither word comprehension nor word production, but a correlation can not be out ruled because of a relatively low number of children in each subgroup. Explorative analyze of the individual age equivalent results for the word production test indicated: (a) the majority of children with hearing impairment performed within the lower half of the normal results; (b) two children with cochlear implants achieved a particularly low result; (c) participants with a mild hearing impairment tend to have a lower result than the participants with a severe hearing impairment, which might indicate insufficient support; and (d) one participant with moderate hearing impairment performed a result at the same level as the highest result in the control group.</p>

I föreliggande studie undersöktes ordförrådet (ordförståelse och benämning) hos 21 barn med hörselskada och 21 normalhörande barn i åldrarna 7-9 år, matchade till ålder, kön och bostadsort. Deltagarna delades även in i undergrupper med avseende på hörselskadans typ (ledningshinder, sensorineural skada samt kombinerad skada) och grad (lätt, måttlig, grav och döva/hörselskadade barn med CI) samt typ av skolform. Ordförståelse undersöktes med Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III och benämning undersöktes med Word Finding Vocabulary Test. Som förväntat hade gruppen med hörselskada lägre resultat på båda testen, men endast benämningstestet visade en statistiskt signifikant gruppskillnad (p = 0,002 jämfört med p = 0,054 för ordförståelse). För benämningstestet hade barn med hörselskada i 7-års ålder ett signifikant lägre resultat jämfört med åldersmatchad kontrollgrupp, medan skillnaden inte var signifikant i de äldre åldersgrupperna (8 och 9 år). Typ, grad, kön eller skolform (hörselklass kontra integrerad skolform) hade ingen signifikant effekt på något av testen, men samband kan inte uteslutas pga relativt få barn i varje undergrupp i denna studie. Explorativ analys av individuella åldersekvivalenta resultat för benämningstestet indikerade följande: (a) majoriteten av de hörselskadade barnen låg inom den nedre halvan av normalresultatet; (b) två barn med cochleaimplantat hade särskilt låga resultat; (c) deltagare med lätt hörselskada tenderade att ha sämre resultat än deltagare med grav hörselskada, vilket kan tyda på otillräckligt stöd vid lätt skada; och (d) en deltagare med måttlig hörselskada hade lika högt resultat som det högsta resultatet i kontrollgruppen. / This study examined the receptive and expressive vocabulary in 21 children with hearing impairment and 21 children with normal hearing between the ages of 7-9. The groups were matched in regard to age, gender and home district. The material was divided into categories of hearing impairment based on type (conductive, sensorineural and combined hearing impairment), severity (mild, moderate, severe and children with profound deafness/hearing impairment with cochlear implant) and children in hard of hearing classes versus children integrated in ordinary classes. The tests used were Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (word comprehension) and Word Finding Vocabulary Test (word production). As expected, the group of children with impaired hearing achieved lower results on both tests. However, only the result on the word production test was significant for children with hearing impairment (p = 0,002 compared with p = 0,054 for comprehension). 7 years old children with hearing impairment reached a significantly lower result on the word production test compared with their peers with normal hearing, whereas the difference between the groups of 8 and 9 years old children was not significant. Type, severity, gender or school placement (hard of hearing classes versus ordinary classes) had no significant effect on neither word comprehension nor word production, but a correlation can not be out ruled because of a relatively low number of children in each subgroup. Explorative analyze of the individual age equivalent results for the word production test indicated: (a) the majority of children with hearing impairment performed within the lower half of the normal results; (b) two children with cochlear implants achieved a particularly low result; (c) participants with a mild hearing impairment tend to have a lower result than the participants with a severe hearing impairment, which might indicate insufficient support; and (d) one participant with moderate hearing impairment performed a result at the same level as the highest result in the control group.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the working methods and teaching methods used by Swedish teachers in grade 5 at two different schools in Västerort, and how these six swedish teachers argue about fiction and their influence on the development of word understanding by second language speakers. During this study, qualitative methods are used, in the form of observations and interviews.  To fulfill the purpose of my survey, I have formulated the following two questions: 1.      How do the six different Swedish teachers work in the classroom to promote the wording of second language speakers in reading fictional texts? 2.      How do the six Swedish teachers reason about their work on the understanding of words and fiction, as well as the connection between them? The result of the study shows that the six participating Swedish teachers in two different schools mention and use different successful teaching methods and practices that promote the development of word understanding by second language speakers. The survey also shows that fictional texts are used with the purpose of developing the vocabulary of second language speakers, word learning and word understanding. The study shows that all participating Swedish teachers argue, and work based on a multimodal approach, where images, own experiences, student prerequisites and illustrations are used as teaching methods. Furthermore, the study shows that all teachers agree on what they regard as successful working methods. Explicit and implicit teaching, reading, discussion, conversation, full-class work, small groups and in pairs are what the teachers mention and choose to work with in conjunction with fictional texts. Conversation and discussion about the reading fiction and the unknown word together make it possible for interaction and support.