The aim of this comparative study is to investigate language proficiency in English among Swedes and the Finnish-speaking population living in Sweden, henceforth referred to as Sweden Finns. The main issue is to discover to what extent Sweden Finns show similarity and how they differ from Swedes regarding their proficiency in English, concerning grammar and vocabulary. Through a proficiency test, this essay intends to compare and discover any possible tendencies among male and female monolingual and bilingual participants. Gender issues are rather unexplored in research on bilingualism. Sex, or gender, as a variable has received a limited amount of attention compared with other factors of individual variation, such as age or language learning strategies in the field of SLA. The results of the statistical analysis of the data indicate that results are varied, and therefore confirm previous results. Sweden Finns score higher as a group on the test than Swedes, but male Swedish participants gave the most correct answers on all questions, followed by female Sweden Finns, then male Sweden Finns and ultimately female Swedes. Interesting, but not statistically significant, findings suggest that the students participating in this study have a good vocabulary size and are acquainted with high-frequency words and pronouns. Most errors were found in the parts concerning irregular verbs and synonyms. Multiple-choice questions received a higher frequency of right answers than open questions. As the results are varied since this type of study has not been carried out before, it shows that there is a need for nuanced quantitative research in this field of study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-70987 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Philp, Rebecca |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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