Klassrumsinteraktion i de tidiga skolåren : flerspråkiga elever i skolans språkliga vardag

Classroom interaction is particularly important for those students who learn school knowledge in a second language. In this article two episodes of whole class teaching in pre-school and standard one are analyzed. The analysis shows the importance of making teachers aware of interactional patterns in classrooms. Although knowledge was presented clearly and concretely and teachers used routines that made norms explicit, inconsistencies in interactional patterns made the role of the teacher stand out as unclear. Whole class teaching of this type does not provide students with such linguistic and intellectual demands that are necessary for their language development.

The priority of temporal aspects in L2-Swedish prosody : Studies in perception and production

Foreign accent can be everything from hardly detectable to rendering the second language speech unintelligible. It is assumed that certain aspects of a specific target language contribute more to making the foreign accented speech intelligible and listener friendly, than others. The present thesis examines a teaching strategy for Swedish pronunciation in second language education. The teaching strategy “Basic prosody” or BP, gives priority to temporal aspects of Swedish prosody, which means the temporal phonological contrasts word stress and quantity, as well as the durational realizations of these contrasts. BP does not prescribe any specific tonal realizations. This standpoint is based on the great regional variety in realization and distribution of Swedish word accents. The teaching strategy consists virtually of three directives: · Stress the proper word in the sentence. · Stress proper syllables in stressed words and make them longer. · Lengthen the proper segment – vowel or subsequent consonant – in the stressed syllable. These directives reflect the view that all phonological length is stress-induced, and that vowel length and consonant length are equally important as learning goals. BP is examined in the light of existing findings in the field of second language pronunciation and with respect to the phonetic correlates of Swedish stress and quantity. Five studies examine the relation between segment durations and the categorization made by native Swedish listeners. The results indicate that the postvocalic consonant duration contributes to quantity categorization as well as giving the proper duration to stressed syllables. Furthermore, native Swedish speakers are shown to apply the complementary /V: C/ - /VC:/ pattern also when speaking English and German, by lengthening postvocalic consonants. The correctness of the priority is not directly addressed but important aspects of BP are supported by earlier findings as well as the results from the present studies.

Teaching grammar: A study of the common English grammar errors and grammar teaching methods that can be relevant for Swedish upper secondary schools

Grammar has always been an important part of language learning. Based on various theories, such as the universal grammar theory (Chomsky, 1959) and, the input theory (Krashen, 1970), the explicit and implicit teaching methods have been developed. Research shows that both methods may have some benefits and disadvantages. The attitude towards English grammar teaching methods in schools has also changed and nowadays grammar teaching methods and learning strategies, as a part of language mastery, are one of the discussion topics among linguists. This study focuses on teacher and learner experiences and beliefs about teaching English grammar and difficulties learners may face. The aim of the study is to conduct a literature review and to find out what scientific knowledge exists concerning the previously named topics. Along with this, the relevant steering documents are investigated focusing on grammar teaching at Swedish upper secondary schools. The universal grammar theory of Chomsky as well as Krashen’s input hypotheses provide the theoretical background for the current study. The study has been conducted applying qualitative and quantitative methods. The systematic search in four databases LIBRIS, ERIK, LLBA and Google Scholar were used for collecting relevant publications. The result shows that scientists’ publications name different grammar areas that are perceived as problematic for learners all over the world. The most common explanation of these difficulties is the influence of learner L1. Research presents teachers’ and learners’ beliefs to the benefits of grammar teaching methods. An effective combination of teaching methods needs to be done to fit learners’ expectations and individual needs. Together, they will contribute to the achieving of higher language proficiency levels and, therefore, they can be successfully applied at Swedish upper secondary schools.

What affects recognition most – wrong wordstress or wrong word accent?

In an attempt to find out which of the two Swedish prosodic contrasts of 1) wordstress pattern and 2) tonal word accent category has the greatest communicative weight, a lexical decision experiment was conducted: in one part word stress pattern was changed from trochaic to iambic, and in the other part trochaic accentII words were changed to accent I.Native Swedish listeners were asked to decide whether the distorted words werereal words or ‘non-words’. A clear tendency is that listeners preferred to give more‘non-word’ responses when the stress pattern was shifted, compared to when wordaccent category was shifted. This could have implications for priority of phonological features when teaching Swedish as a second language.

Mobile Assisted Language Learning : A Literature Review

Mobile assisted language learning (MALL) is a subarea of the growing field of mobile learning (mLearning) research which increasingly attracts the attention of scholars. This study provides a systematic review of MALL research within the specific area of second language acquisition during the period 2007 - 2012 in terms of research approaches, methods, theories and models, as well as results in the form of linguistic knowledge and skills. The findings show that studies of mobile technology use in different aspects of language learning support the hypothesis that mobile technology can enhance learners’ second language acquisition. However, most of the reviewed studies are experimental, small-scale, and conducted within a short period of time. There is also a lack of cumulative research; most theories and concepts are used only in one or a few papers. This raises the issue of the reliability of findings over time, across changing technologies, and in terms of scalability. In terms of gained linguistic knowledge and skills, attention is primarily on learners’ vocabulary acquisition, listening and speaking skills, and language acquisition in more general terms.

Representations of culture in EIL : Cultural representation in Swedish EFL textbooks

The English language has become an international language and is globally used as a lingua franca. Therefore, there has been a shift in English-language education toward teaching English as an interna-tional language (EIL). Teaching from the EIL paradigm means that English is seen as an international language used in communication by people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As the approach to English-language education changes from the traditional native-speaker, target country context, so does the role of culture within English-language teaching. The aim of this thesis is to in-vestigate and analyse cultural representations in two Swedish EFL textbooks used in upper-secondary school to see how they correspond with the EIL paradigm. This is done by focusing on the geograph-ical origin of the cultural content as well as looking at what kinds of culture are represented in the textbooks. A content analysis of the textbooks is conducted, using Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English as the model for the analysis of the geographical origin. Horibe’s model of the three different kinds of culture in EIL is the model used for coding the second part of the analysis. The results of the analysis show that culture of target countries and "Culture as social custom" dominate the cultural content of the textbook. Thus, although there are some indications that the EIL paradigm has influ-enced the textbooks, the traditional approach to culture in language teaching still prevails in the ana-lysed textbooks. Because of the relatively small sample included in the thesis, further studies need to be conducted in order to make conclusions regarding the Swedish context as a whole.

Aprendizagem de escrita de língua de sinais pelo sistema SignWriting : língua de sinais no papel e no computador

Esta tese trata de como o sistema SignWriting pode servir de suporte a uma nova proposta pedagógica ao ensino da escrita de língua de sinais e letramento para crianças surdas usuárias da Língua Brasileira de Sinais - Libras e da Língua de Sinais Francesa - LSF. Escrever deve ser uma atividade significativa para a criança. No caso da criança surda, a escrita fundamenta-se em sua competência na língua de sinais, sem precisar da intermediação da língua oral. A criança surda, quando em um ambiente onde ela e seus colegas se comunicam em língua de sinais, efetivamente tenta escrever sinais, quando é incentivada a fazê-lo. Em nossos experimentos, usamos o sistema SignWriting para mostrar ás crianças surdas (e a seus pais e professores) como escrever textos em línguas de sinais de ambas as formas: manuscrita e impressa, usando o programa Sign Writer para editar textos em línguas de sinais. A base teórica que apóia a tese é a abordagem bilíngüe para a educação de surdos, a língua de sinais, a teoria de Piaget, e de Ferreiro quando trata das etapas da alfabetização em língua oral. Esta investigação possui um caráter exploratório, em que o delineamento metodológico é dado pela pesquisa-ação. O primeiro estudo apresenta um levantamento do processo de aquisição da escrita de sinais, em sua forma manuscrita, pela criança e jovem surdo no Brasil e na França. O segundo estudo trata da ajuda que a informática pode dar a essa aquisição e de como utilizamos os softwares de escrita de língua de sinais em aulas de introdução ao uso do computador e em transcrições da LSF de corpus vídeo para a escrita de língua de sinais. Os resultados sugerem que as crianças evoluem em sua escrita, pois muitos signos que elas escreveram não foram sugeridos pela experimentadora, nem por outro meio, mas surgiram espontaneamente. A introdução de um software como o Sign Writer ou o SW-Edit nas classes para introduzir as TI traz a essas aulas muito maior interesse do que quando usamos um editor de textos na língua oral. Também as produções das crianças são mais sofisticadas. As conclusões indicam que a escrita de língua de sinais incorporada à educação das crianças surdas pode significar um avanço significativo na consolidação de uma educação realmente bilíngüe, na evolução das línguas de sinais e aponta para a possibilidade de novas abordagens ao ensino da língua oral como segunda língua.

O latim, uma língua morta?: uma metáfora em análise: o olhar da lingüística aplicada e suas implicações para o ensino

The focus of this research is the teaching of the Latin language. Due to the fact that its teaching has been facing a growing crisis in the last four decades, which currently persists, we ponder about external and internal causes of its decline, aiming at pointing out an alternative that enable us to find a way out of this situation. So, our research questions mainly concern how the teaching of Latin is viewed amongst the academic society, also investigating if it has kept up with the development of the scientific reflection about human language and the new approaches on language teaching. Furthermore, we analyse the contribution that the study of Latin can provide to the academic formation of language teachers and try to identify the areas of knowledge that can contribute to a reshaping of its teaching. Based on these guidelines, we have established as the goals of this research: 1) to reflect about the current situation of the teaching of Latin and the causes of its decline; 2) to determine its social representation among teachers and students of the Language Courses, as a way of defining the role it fulfills in the academic formation of teachers; 3) to accomplish an exploratory study of some handbooks that show alternative proposals on how to teach Latin, in order to detect their adequacy to current times and to the goals of the academic study of languages; 4) to offer an alternative proposal on how to teach Latin that takes into account the principles of Applied Linguistics, considering the socio-historical and cultural aspects of the language, enabling it to meet the requirements set by modern times. This research is divided into two parts. The first part presents the theoretical framework. We map the studies about Latin teaching inside and outside Brazil and argue against the concept of Latin being a dead language, presenting arguments set on changing this view. Then we describe and comment the notions of literacy, genre and culture, which helped us understand the reasons for the decline of the teaching of Latin and to point out suitable ways to overcome the crisis. The second part is dedicated to reflecting on the literacy practices in Latin teaching. We began by examining the answers to the questionnaires given to students and teachers about the view of Latin in the Language Courses; then we reflect on the teaching-learning of Latin as an academic literacy practice followed by an analysis of the didactic material used in teaching Latin. Finally, we suggest an approach of the familiar letter genre in ancient Rome as a means of teaching Latin in a contextualized way

As estratégias de negação variantes no inglês falado: uma comparação com o português

The general aim of this work is to verify the occurence of variant forms of negation in spoken English with the purpose of making a comparative study between the English and the Portuguese languages. As for Portuguese, we used as a matter of reference a study already made on negation. As for English, we analized a corpus of the North American English variant organized by a university in the United States. This study is based on the North American Functional Linguistics theoretical perspective, which considers relevant the study of language used in real situations of communicative interaction. The data analisys proved that there is at least one form of negative variant in spoken English which is not allowed by prescriptive grammar. This phenomenon turns out to be similar to Portuguese, which includes three variant strategies. According to the data obtained, it was possible to verify that the variant strategy used in English, from a contrastive point of view, corresponds to a negative strategy ruled by Portuguese prescriptive grammar. Finally, we discussed about the different conceptions of language, grammar and teaching, giving suggestions to colaborate to a productive and reflexive teaching of first or second language

Aquisição/aprendizagem de LE: subjetividade e deslocamentos identitários

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A interação verbal na língua-alvo e a proficiência oral na prática de sala de aula: (re) definindo o perfil de uma professora de língua inglesa da escola pública

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Atividade epilinguística em sala de aula: as interpretações naturais feitas pelos alunos

Pós-graduação em Linguística e Língua Portuguesa - FCLAR

A descrição de idiomatismos nominais: proposta fraseográfica português-espanhol

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A auto-avaliação em um contexto de ensino-aprendizagem de línguas em tandem via chat

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Polissemia em phrasal verbs: uma concepção semântico-cognitiva de análise e aplicação didática

Pós-graduação em Linguística e Língua Portuguesa - FCLAR