The present project is a first step towards a new Swedish assessment tool to examine phonological ability in preschool-aged children. The work consisted of developing a word list with words that was considered to reveal a child?s phonological ability and to try out the word list on pre-school children. The reason was to make sure that the words existed in the vocabulary of the children in the chosen ages. A word list consisting of 109 words, which convey relevant phonological information, was created.

The purpose of this study was to examine if there were anychanges in quality in the voices of speech and language pathology studentsafter four years of study at the University of Gothenburg. Recordings oftwenty student voices from the first and eight semesters were evaluatedperceptually by six speech-language pathologists. The parameters judgedwere: vocal fry, glottal attacks, strain, breathiness and resonant voice, usinga scale from 0 to 10. Acoustical measures were made of F0 mean andmedian to detect possible differences between the two recordings. Theresults show a significant decrease in vocal fry, glottal attacks and strain aswell as an increase in resonant voice and a significant decrease in F0 meanand median.

I samhället idag framkommer det allt fler barn som har någon form av språkstörning. Kunskapen bör därför hållas uppdaterad bland logopeder och talpedagoger med flera och att det även finns tillgång till stöd och hjälp för dessa barn. Kommunens översikt över behovet av hjälp är också viktigt för att barnen ska få de bästa möjliga förutsättningarna. Kommunen bör sedan göra det som krävs för att hjälpen för barn med språkstörning ska finnas tillgänglig i kommunen.I denna studie är vårt syfte att se vad det finns för hjälp för barn med språkstörning i olika kommuner och om hjälpen skiljer sig åt beroende på om kommunen är större eller mindre. Den frågeställning vi valt till denna undersökning är: Skiljer sig hjälpen åt för barn med språkstörningar i större respektive mindre kommuner och i så fall varför?Denna studie är kvalitativ och består av en strukturerad intervju.

This report describes how to process audio signals in real time with a digital signalprocessor. The digital signal processor used in the thesis and described in the reportare the Blackfin processor ADSP-BF537 from Analog Devices.In the body of this report there is theory of the processor characteristics and thevarious programming languages used. All experiments that were made on theprocessor are described, these descriptions also help in understanding the annexeswhere the experiments will be presented. The body of this report also describes theprogram used to do experiments. Testing the CPU limit was done and the results arepresented to get a good view of what it can handle.

The EU-funded project European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) aims to integrateresources from various domains within the field of cultural heritage, and make them availableon the Internet. To accomplish this integration it is necessary to describe the various resourcesin a way that will achieve cross-domain interoperability. This description of digital resourcesis commonly referred to as metadata. The most well known and used metadata standard is theDublin Core Metadata Element Set, a general standard developed for the purpose ofdescribing all types of digital resources. Since the mid-1990's a large number of specializedstandards have emerged in different communities, for example IMDI, designed for detaileddescription of language resources.This thesis aims to examine the possibility of combining a general and a specialized metadatastandard to achieve cross-domain interoperability and at the same time provide a sufficientlydetailed description of language resources for researchers within the field of linguistics.

This master thesis was conducted in order to investigate the effects of the browsing species Yeheb on animal tissues in Swedish landrace goats and to make a literature review in order to increase the knowledge of the importance of this plant for livestock production in Somalia. The evergreen Yeheb bush is a very important feeding source for grazing and browsing animals in Somalia during the dry period. Yeheb contains cordeauxiaquinone that stains the bones of the animals red/pink, which has been an increasing problem when exporting meat to foreign countries. In an experiment, two goats were fed dry and fresh leaves from the Yeheb bush for one and two months, respectively. The goats did not feed the intended amount of dry leaves, since the supply and palatability was not as high as estimated.

Sarah Kane?s first play Blasted (1995) has often been read in a normative and biographical way by critics, authors and previous researchers. This essay makes a supplementary close reading of Blasted from gender and genealogical perspectives and utilizes theoretical works by Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault. My study makes clear that the characters different positions in language and talk create and maintain a power imbalance between them. Efforts to change and develop one?s individual position in language and talk are being made throughout the play since it is the only way to bring about a change in the social power structure.

This project report shows the work around a mockup to a three-dimensional avatar-making application. An avatar-making application is a computer-based software program in which it is possible to create your own personal virtual character. The possibility to use three-dimensional avatars can in the future be essential for adding extra personal information or characteristics to social communication over the internet or over mobile phones. The problem of transforming a physical form and reconstruct it to a virtual basis has been an important problem to solve for many companies and software developers in the, for instance, virtual worlds area. Methods and ideas over making this transformation is the key throughout this project.

The essay investigates the visual element as seen by the audience and artist to be of greatest importance to a musicalperformance. The study was conducted in the form of a field work which included doing interviews with artists, surveys of the audience and interpretive observations of live performance. The fieldwork was conducted in three different environments in which I found myself on the spot and performed the various stages included in the field work. It was done to create a surface that could be used in an essay, and through that use this material to compare and analyze my results and in the end be able to answer my questions. I started from eight different factors which all could beexperienced visually on stage.

Swedish as a second language and special education are two topics that have a lot in common. I have chosen to in my study look at something that is covered by the two subjects: Swedish as a second language education that is taking place in a group segregated from the class. I have interviewed students in preschool, grade one and grade two to learn details of their experience of the segregation. Finding out that it is mostly bad planning and trouble getting the schedule together that?s affecting the pupils in a negative way.

SammanfattningAtt kunna identifiera och förstå olika varieteter av målspråket är en grundläggande förutsättning för att andraspråksinlärare av svenska ska kunna bli fullständig deltagare i dagens flerspråkiga svenska samhälle. Den här studien har till syfte att explorativt undersöka vuxna andraspråksinlärares tillägnande av kunskaper i språklig variation vad gäller modersmålssvenska och andraspråkssvenska, samt deras sociolingvistiska medvetenhet. Detta testas och analyseras genom olika moment i ett lyssnarexperiment, dvs. hur L2-lyssnare bedömer olika talare, hur de förklarar sin bedömning och hur de uppfattar sig själva jämfört med olika talare. En bakgrundsenkät används för att samla in information om språklig erfarenhet och koppla den till L2-lyssnarnas bedömningar.

This essay investigates and compares the readability in two different schoolbooks: Eko Historia (the primary school grade 4-6) and Epos Historia (the upper secondary school). The questions of the survey are:- Which differences in linguistic and layout can be found between books meant for the primary school and books meant for the upper secondary school?- Are the texts easy to read according to the former research in readability?In order to answer the questions structural dimensions as lexicon, syntax, bounds between sentences and narrative voices have been studied. Also the texts disposition and typography have been examined.The results demonstrate that the book designed for the primary school has a verbal structure with an explicit vocabulary, lots of verbs and short sentences. A clear narrative voice gives an impression of spoken language.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the foremost teachers thinking of computers in teaching, how they work practically with computers as a tool, and if it is reflected in the students' school performance. To carry out this study, I used qualitative interviews as a method and I have interviewed four teachers where two works at the high school and two in upper secondary school. Both schools use computers in teaching as a supplementary tool for teaching materials. All teachers have similar ideas regarding what purpose one should use the computer and in which way, but the important thing is that the teachers and students receive an introductory course in how to use computers. Educators agree that this approach is and can promote students' language and knowledge regardless of the subject.My informants have come up with own methods that they use in the digital classroom including Skype, YouTube, Facebook and flippedclassroom where one can learn from other educators working.

The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the role of language and culture as ethnical identification factors and illustrate how these have been used as political weapons by the Serb regime in Kosovo during the last decade. The thesis discusses the concept of ethnicity, the relations between the politics of identity, nationalism, ethnic mobilization and the importance of language and culture. Kosovo has historically been characterized by severe ethnic antagonism between Serbs and Albanians. Different languages, cultures and religions beside political processes led to ethnic cleavages that paved the way for ethnocentrism, ethnonationalism, chauvinism, ethnic cleansing and civil war. Since 1989, the Serbian authorities have intervened in all important spheres of life, in an attempt to Serbianize Kosovo.

There's a good adherence to the vaccination of children, about 98% of all two year olds are vaccinated. Despite this, there are cases of whooping cough and measles in Sweden. The purpose of the study was to describe what motivates parents to not vaccinate and reflections and attiudes about vaccinations. The study had a descriptive design with qualitative approach. Eight parents who had chosen not to follow the National Board of Health?s vaccination program or whom had decided to completely abandon, participated in the study.