Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur elever i en sjundeklass i södra delen av Sverige förhåller sig till grammatikundervisningen samt hur de menar att läraren kan förbättra undervisningen i grammatik. Arbetet sammanställer akademisk litteratur och tidigare forskning om grammatik och grammatikundervisning i den svenska skolan för att hjälpa oss att besvara de angivna frågeställningarna. Den empiriska undersökningen gjordes i form av en enkätstudie där 14 elever deltog. Studien genomfördes på en grundskola i södra Sverige. Enkätundersökningen visar att de flesta av eleverna har förstått innebörden av begreppet grammatik. Eleverna tycker att grammatikundervisningen är viktig men tråkig och ganska lätt. Studien visar även att eleverna har en god bild av vilken nytta de har av grammatik både idag och i framtiden.
Through a liberal feminist perspective, this essay investigates the unconventional marital views of the fictional character Elizabeth Bennet. These are analyzed and compared to the traditional marital opinions of the novel's social environment. Moreover, the historical context is important in understanding the marital views in Pride and Prejudice, because the novel was written at a time when the views toward marriage changed significantly. This paper argues that Elizabeth's behavior, expressed opinions and rejections of Mr. Collins's and Mr. Darcy's proposals depict liberal feminist ideas of marriage. The literary review supports the notion that there are two contrasting attitudes toward marriage in Pride and Prejudice: the traditional view and the liberal feminist view. The thorough examination of Elizabeth Bennet's character strongly suggests that she represents the unconventional view of marriage, while characters such as Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet, and Charlotte Lucas voice the traditional view of marriage. Furthermore, an analysis of Mr. Darcy's attraction toward Elizabeth indicates that it was Elizabeth's very unconventionality that made Mr. Darcy fall in love with her.
The concern of this essay is to analyze how boxing terminology is used metaphorically in different contexts. The objective is to investigate the targets that these terms as the source domain are most often aimed at, i.e. what is described metaphorically by the use of boxing terms, and to analyze the possible reasons why a particular boxing term is chosen as the source to understand a particular target.
This essay focuses on the topics of sexism and the function of gender and oppression in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. Instances in the novel are related to real world incidents in order to show how Ali, in spite of her Western upbringing and perspective, has accurately depicted several problematical cases of injustice in Muslim culture. Even though Ali has been criticized for her, supposedly, incorrect portrayal of Bangladeshis in London, this essay will argue that the topics of the novel remain relevant in the larger scheme of Muslim society.
Taboo language is a broad definition, and researchers have defined it in various categories. Using taboo language, to a great extent, is widely considered as offensive and inappropriate, as well as a specialty of men rather than women. Men and women are often said to use taboo language differently. This study aims to analyze the use of taboo language in conversations of women’s, men’s and mixed-gender talk in some episodes from the American TV series Sex and the City. The study will examine the differences and similarities of using taboo language in male and female speech in terms of gender differences, and conversational strategies in general.
Set in the totalitarian society of Oceania, George Orwell’s 1984 illustrates how a government can exert complete control over its citizens through surveillance, manipulation, and more central to this essay, language. By employing a structuralist framework based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s research on semiotics and the system of language, this essay investigates the viability of Newspeak as a language. It does so by using the aspects of arbitrariness, value, difference, the collective, and mutability to discern to what extent Orwell’s Newspeak aligns with Saussure’s theory of how languages function. In addition, it looks at how these language changes can be observed using specific examples of the novel. The essay finds that the implementation of Newspeak is entirely reliant on other areas of the government’s totalitarian oppression in order to be feasibly implemented, as semiotic theory argues language is a product of the collective and, as such, cannot be constructed by a group of individuals. The essay thus concludes that Newspeak as a constructed language is not viable, as over time, the language will inevitably return to the hands of the collective consciousness, and once that happens, the language will begin to change according to the needs of the linguistic community.
L'A. analyse la fonction intégrative de l'anglais seconde langue pour des suédois ayant immigré au Canada. Il s'appuie sur l'expérience de Niels Lindset, personnage fictif du roman de Frederick Philip Grove Settlers of the March publié en 1925 qui, après avoir immigré au Canada, entame l'apprentissage d'une seconde langue. Il montre ainsi, à travers le personnage de Niels mais aussi de documents de l'époque (journaux, interviews) que l'acquisition de l'anglais pour ces immigrants suédois est la base de leur intégration socioculturelle.
Equality between boys and girls is often discussed and is also stipulated in The Swedish National Curriculum. The present study examines students of English in Swedish secondary school from the perspective of grabbing the conversational floor in relation to the teacher. Previous research does not agree concerning which gender dominates the classroom. However, many researchers show that boys are the ones dominating the classroom. Observations were made in three classes of English in year 9 where specific aspects studied were on the one hand the gender of the student grabbing the floor and on the other hand the manner in which the individual student grabbed the floor. A questionnaire asking for the students’ attitudes towards grabbing the conversational floor was also distributed and is taken into account in the result of the present study. The research reveals three results where the fist result shows that the vast majority of both boys and girls grab the conversational floor in relation to the teacher by speaking out loud in the classroom. The second result shows that it is close to even between girls and boys concerning who dominates the conversational floor in relation to the teacher. The third result shows that both girls and boys consider raising ones hand to be the best way of grabbing the floor in relation to the teacher in the classroom. The students clearly stated the importance of the teacher’s way of teaching and his/her attitude towards how students should grab the floor. The differences between students attitudes towards manners of grabbing the floor and their actual ways of acting can therefore be connected to the teacher’s behavior in the classroom.
The purpose of this study is to contribute to previous research on the subject of language transition in Tanzania. The aim is also that the information gained in this study can be used to improve students' prospects when they undergo the linguistic transition from primary school to secondary school. This is a qualitative study with quantitative elements, using method triangulation, which examines how students experience the linguistic transition from Kiswahili to English and how it affects them. The study also highlights the students' own opinions about which language they would prefer as the language of instruction in secondary school.
Relevant information about the history of Tanzania and the linguistic situation in the country are outlined. Previous research on the subject is also presented. The two theories that are used are Bourdieu’s social theory and Said's theory of Orientalism. The study uses focus groups and surveys in oder to answer the questions at hand. The research itself is conducted in two government schools in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The three questions at issue are as follows:
Do the students feel that they have sufficient knowledge of English in order to be ready for the transition of the language of instruction from Kiswahili to English in secondary school?
How do the students perceive that the transition of languages affects their performance in school and in their future?
If the students had the opportunity to choose, which language would they prefer as the language of instruction in Secondary school in Tanzania?
The conclusions are that the students feel that the linguistic transition is difficult and that they lack sufficient knowledge of English. Although several of the students struggle with the vocabulary and the pronunciation, they feel that English is the path to higher education and a good job. These are contributing factors to the fact that the majority of the students prefer English as their language of instruction in secondary school, to their own national language, Kiswahili.
There are different types of psycholinguistic approaches which attempt to examine the quality and the organization of the human mental lexicon; the word association experiment is one of them. The word association experiment can be used to probe the development of human vocabulary. The current investigation was carried out in order to trace the influence of the cultural background and L2 knowledge on the mental lexicon of the undergraduate Pakistani L2 learners of English. It was hypothesized that the individual‟s culture and knowledge of L2 bear direct relation with their mental lexicon. Influenced by the culture, they may connect different words with attitudinal bonds, whereas L2 knowledge is accountable for the growth of vocabulary. The motivation stems from the fact that none of the previous studies has targeted Pakistani L2 learners for the word association test in order to investigate their mental lexicon. The data was gathered through a word association test. The results supported the hypothesis. A considerable amount of attitudinal responses emerged in their responses, and the number of paradigmatic responses found in the data was the highest of all. Therefore, it was concluded that Pakistani L2 learners‟ vocabulary was considerably influenced by their cultural milieu due to the presence of attitudinal responses to the stimulus words, and their vocabulary is patterning toward native-like since the number of paradigmatic relations with the stimulus words was the highest of other types of relations. The findings carry important implications for didactics.
This study addresses gender assignment in six North Scandinavian varieties with a three-gender system: Old Norse, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Old Swedish, Nysvenska, Jamtlandic, and Elfdalian. Focusing on gender variation and change, we investigate the role of various factors in gender change. Using the contemporary Swedish varieties Jamtlandic and Elfdalian as a basis, we compare gender assignment in other North Scandinavian languages, tracing the evolution back to Old Norse. The data consist of 1,300 concepts from all six languages coded for cognacy, gender, and morphological and semantic variation. Our statistical analysis shows that the most important factors in gender change are the Old Norse weak/strong inflection, Old Norse gender, animate/inanimate distinction, word frequency, and loan status. From Old Norse to modern languages, phonological assignment principles tend to weaken, due to the general loss of word-final endings. Feminine words are more susceptible to changing gender, and the tendency to lose the feminine is noticeable even in the varieties in our study upholding the three-gender system. Further, frequency is significantly correlated with unstable gender. In semantics, only the animate/inanimate distinction significantly predicts gender assignment and stability. In general, our study confirms the decay of the feminine gender in the Scandinavian branch of Germanic.
Kunskapen i och om grannspråket är meningslös. Om vi bara lyckas besinna detta, ser vi samtidigt att samma grannspråk kan tjäna som medel för andra mål och meningar, som ökad språklig, litterär, kulturell medvetenhet och, inte minst, förstärkt förmåga att förundras. Däri ligger grannspråkets stora glädje och gagn.
Ditt språk i min mun är en essäistisk självbiografi som sprakar av engagemang för litteratur, kommunikation och grannskap. Den sammanflätar skandinaviska, tyska och italienska kulturmöten och gränslandsupplevelser med inre gränsländer och pläderar kraftfullt för öppenhet och ärlighet i grannkontakterna. Öresund blir härmed en plats där hela världen ryms, representeras och skakas om. Utsiktsposten är bron mellan det svenska och det danska. Men bron räcker inte hela vägen. Också genom en imaginär tunnel måste man färdas, genom de egna fördomarna och tillkortakommandena. Här går ingen fri.
Studien syftar till att undersöka hur elever hanterar kriteriet om vetenskapligt arbetssätt i projektarbeten av teoretisk karaktär. Detta ger en fingervisning av på vilka aspekter av vetenskaplighet som gymnasieelevers arbetssätt uppvisar styrkor respektive svagheter. Projektredovisningarna utgörs av texter på mellan 15 och 25 sidor som är skrivna av gymnasieelever som läser det tredje och sista året i svensk gymnasieskola. I undersökningen har analyser gjorts av fyra elevtexter enligt en egenkomponerad analysmodell genom vilken tre aspekter av elevernas texter fokuseras. Aspekterna är kritiskt tänkande, slutledningsförmåga och referenshantering. Resultatet visar över lag att eleverna har god slutledningsförmåga, men att deras kritiska tänkande och deras sätt att hantera referenser är bristande.
The aim of the thesis is to investigate vocabulary learning strategies that are used and perceived to be helpful by English learners while communicating online. The participants of the study are 20 young Lithuanian English learners (23-28 years old) who use online communication on a weekly basis. The method of the research is a combination of a questionnaire and a follow-up email interview. The questionnaire items are based on Schmitt’s taxonomy of vocabulary learning strategies (1997), while the interview questions deal both with certain choices in the questionnaire and general attitudes towards online communication. The results of the study show that an overwhelming majority of the respondents are experienced users of a number of online communication types and mostly interact via emails and short messages about leisure and work issues. The most used vocabulary strategies are different from the ones perceived to be most helpful. Although the respondents tend to choose individual determination strategies to discover a new word’s meaning, they believe social strategies to be highly beneficial. A conclusion might be made that as long as language learners are provided with instructions, socializing on the Internet might be a tool of English vocabulary learning.
This essay is to find out how men and women use compliments in English conversations in TV-series. The compliments will be analyzed as to their frequency, form topic and function.
This study aims to investigate whether incidental methods are used in learning English vocabulary by non-English students at college in China, and in teaching English vocabulary by their oral English teachers. It also finds out what kinds of incidental strategies are used. Then based on the results of the investigation, this study puts forward some pedagogical implications for teachers.