AbstractThis paper aims to examine reading comprehension among Swedish Upper Secondary Schoolstudents who are doing their last school year. My research questions are if the students havesufficient reading comprehension to cope with university studies and higher educationaccording to a comprehension test and if there is a difference between students who studiedSwedish B course or Swedish as a second language B course. Furthermore it involves issuesof differences in results depending on gender and if the second-language students were bornin Sweden or abroad.To get answers to my questions, I let 112 students in my survey carry out the readingcomprehension part of the TISUS test, observed several test sessions, and interviewed 24students who participated in the test. The result shows that most students have difficultieswith the reading comprehension, and probably would find it difficult to study at universitiesor colleges. There are major differences in the results between the Swedish B-students andSwedish as a second language students, but also within these groupings.

This two years master?s thesis is about book circles for children, arranged by the public libraries in Sweden. The purpose is to gain knowledge about how children experience their participation in book circles, and how they experience their own reading. It focuses on children aged 10 to 12 years, and their leisure reading. The research questions are: What are the book circles? function for the participants? How and why do the children read? What kind of literature do they like? Do the children experience that their reading has developed through their participation in the book circles? What parts of the reading process do the book circles influence?The theoretical framework is threefold.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the narrative in You are a bad man, mr Gum! to be able to understand and explain the intermedial aspects of the work. I assume an intermedial, narratological and reception theory perspective in my analysis. The method of close reading is used combined with a reader-oriented perspective. I examine the medial aspects of the chosen work through the pictures, the text, and the iconicity of the typographical pattern of the text. To reach my goal, the following questions are dealt with: What is the character of the narration? How do the various media interact in the production of meaning? What is the relationship between the text and the implicit reader? What is the narratological difference between reading the book aloud and silently? The theoretical framework f the paper consists of narratological and intermedial theories.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school.The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils? reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to increase the knowledge of which strategies students with reading and writing disabilities or dyslexia use to learn in secondary school. The study aims to examine the following questions:Which coping strategies do students with reading and writing disabilities use in their studies?How can remedial teachers support students with reading and writing disabilities in their learning process?The study consists of two interviews with a total of three hours recorded material made with a secondary school teacher who teaches Swedish and English. The teacher has experiences of reading and writing disabilities herself but also from teaching students with dyslexia. The interviews are constructed into a lifestory describing experiences of reading and writing disabilities in school, during teacher training and as a teacher.

During the last ten years, PIRLS and PISA have evaluated the reading levels of children and youth around the world, sometimes with grim results. The Swedish evaluation show a constant decline in reading comprehension, and Sweden, which from the start produced one of the best results in the world, have plummeted to the bottom of the ranks. The librarians of the public library have extensive experience of working with different projects engaging children and youth in reading, and so they have a major part to play in this matter. Consequently, the aim of this study is to examine and describe the different perceptions the public librarians have of these projects. Four research questions were formulated, each focusing on the perceptions regarding different aspects of the reading promotion projects.

This Master's thesis aims to discover, understand and interpret how,with what results, and with what settings adults reading are investigatedin a series of nine Master's theses, written at The Swedish School ofLibrary and Information Science at the University of Borås 2000-2010.This Master's thesis is a meta-study that operates with theoreticalconcepts such as discipline, sub-discipline, research field,interdisciplinarity and with a qualitative research method calledanalytic induction. The results show that LIS - reader studies illustratevaried knowledge about adults reading that investigates with two mainapproaches - a general and a specific one - but with a common interestin two main categories: reading circumstances and reading effects andvalues. LIS ? reader studies show an instrumental perception of theborrowed theories for study of reading and their application and a lessepistemological justification of these in relation to LIS, as own researchfield. The problem area readers and reading is regarded withuncertainty as study topic in the LIS, and this attitude shows up, despitea depth theoretical awareness, a less intellectual self-awareness and amore pragmatic one..

It is not uncommon for math difficulties and reading difficulties to occur simultaneously. Despite this, math and reading difficulties are thought to have different cognitive profiles where math difficulties are linked to number sense; an innate ability to understand, approximate and manipulate both quantities and numerical information, whereas reading difficulties are linked to phonological ability; an innate ability to understand, create representations of and manipulate phonological information. A possible link between the difficulties is that phonological abilities also could affect mathematical ability. Support for this comes from studies where comorbid math and reading difficulties are associated with more severe difficulties in arithmetic ability compared to those with isolated math difficulties. The purpose of this study is to examine whether isolated math difficulties, isolated reading difficulties and comorbid math and reading difficulties can be linked to deficits in number sense, phonological ability or both of these, and whether comorbid math and reading difficulties differ in performance in mathematical tasks compared to isolated math difficulties for children in second grade.

AbstractThe purpose with this essay is to get an insight on how the school has changed over the past years in terms of reading- and writing difficulties/dyslexia. In the literature studies I mention reading- and writing difficulties and the reasons why some people get these problems. Further on in the literature study it is written about what the education act and the curriculum say about the school?s duties towards pupils in need of special support.The result contains interviews with one language pedagogue and one special pedagogue who work in two different municipalities. In addition I interviewed two former pupils who went to school 15-20 years ago.I came to the conclusion that today?s schools have changed to the better for the pupils with difficulties.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

AbstractI have chosen to make a study of the learning of reading and writing, as well as other learning difficulties that may occur, in this research.My choice of subject is based on the realizations I made during my time as a student teacher; that each teacher has his/her own way of teaching reading and writing. Sometimes, however, learning difficulties occur, and this insight caught my attention. It made me think about the underlaying reasons and how we, as teachers, can bring attention to these difficulties. With these questions in mind, I recorded my observations based on a series of interviews and literary studies in an attempt to answer my questions. The resulting research emphasizes how important the actions from the teachers are, as well the importance of having variety in your lesson plan.

Every now and then, in media research studies and in various newspaper articles, schoolboys´ issues reading habits are discussed. Much of what is written concerns boys decreasing marks in the field of literature, in the Swedish language and also their negative attitude towards reading books. Some scholars claim that boys do not read because they consider reading books as a women´s duty. Other people believe that underlying causes for boys negative attitude towards reading is biological, that it´s genetic and consequently physical, and that male and female brains are functionally different. Another theory of today is that boys actually reads, but not that kind of texts and literature that they are exposed to in school.Based on a selection of these opinions and theories, and my own experience and interest for questions concerning school and gender, the aim of this studie was to examine boys worlds of reading.

By studying recent literature and following current research we know that language awareness and a rich language is important to all children when learning reading and writing and that decoding and understanding of the words are the fundamental processes in reading. How do pupils with visual impairment learn how to read and write? What strategies do they use in their contacts with reading and writing? What are the advantages do pupils with visual impairment have when learning to read and write? These questions have been the starting points in a study we have done by following two pupils with visual impairment. By meeting and discussing with the children, their parents, teachers, and lowvisiontherapists we have got a deeper knowledge in how these children meet the language in reading and writing. We have also come to an understanding regarding people surrounding the children have to make reading and writing comprehensive, enjoying, and meaningful.The problem for a child with visual impairment is the decoding, to catch letters and pictures of words good enough with the sight.

Within the Swedish school and the public library communities it is generally held as a truth that reading of fiction develops the empathic ability of the reader. This opinion is also expressed in political guiding documents for the school system and cultural sector. This paper's main hypothesis is that there is no assembled theoretic ground for the statement that reading of fiction develops the empathic ability. The investigation consists of two parts, the first being theoretical and the second empirical. Definitions of what empathy and reading is, are reviewed in the first part.