The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to evaluate three general query-based web search engines. The search engines chosen are Google, Yahoo! and Live Search. The topics, which where transformed into twenty queries, are based on real users? information needs, taken from an ask-a-question service.

The aim of this study is to show how some persons with one of the Swedish national minority languages as mother tongue use a library with regard to their mother tongue and culture. The research questions are: How do Sami-speaking, Finnish-speaking and Meänkieli-speaking (Tornedalen Finnish-speaking) persons use a library with regard to their mother tongue and their culture? What aspects do they find important in this use? As a theoretical frame I have used Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model of the functions of the local library and Will Kymlicka?s theory of the value of maintenance of minority cultures. The study is a qualitative user study. Deep interviews have been conducted with 9 persons with Finnish, Meänkieli or Sami as mother tongue.The results show that the main use of the library is as a cultural centre and the most frequently used service is borrowing of literature.

AbstractAim of this project was to analyse signals and try to localize the position of source of sound. It is donewith three microphones which have 90 degrees angle to each other. Each microphone detects one partof the sound wave. The microphones are connected toan ADC which turns signals from analogue todigital shape. After that the three signals are transformed to a computer.

This paper aims to explore those yet relatively unexplored dimensions of Frantz Fanons (1925-1961) authorship. Fanon, known to the world as a theorist of violence and revolution, was one of the first to ever map the language of the colonizer. The language of the colonizer was, as Fanon would have it, imbued with different notions of time, constructions of historicity and ideological principles of individuality that would dehumanize the colonial subjects. In line with that the colonizer would also speak of the colonized people in what Fanon called zoological terms. From within those different notions emerged a racist rhetoric consistent of, to quote Richard Delgado, words that wounded.

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.

Den kunskap som ett barns föräldrar och förskolepersonal besitter om dess språk är värdefull att tillvarata, särskilt då formaliserade språkbedömningar kan vara svåradministrerade med små barn. Detta kan exempelvis göras via föräldraenkäter. Studiens syfte var att undersöka vilka likheter och skillnader som förelåg mellan bedömningar av språklig förmåga hos barn, gjorda dels av föräldrar och förskolepersonal via en enkät, dels av logopedstudenter via en logopedisk bedömning. Studiedeltagarna utgjordes av 20 barn i åldrarna 2 ½ - 3 år, 20 föräldrar och 14 förskolepersonal. Föräldrar och förskolepersonal besvarade 18 frågor ur föräldraenkäten Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Test - 2 (REEL-2) och barnen testades av logopedstudenterna på uppgifter motsvarande dessa frågor.Resultatet visade bland annat att de genomsnittliga procentuella överensstämmelserna mellan bedömargrupperna var goda.

Den kunskap som ett barns föräldrar och förskolepersonal besitter om dess språk är värdefull att tillvarata, särskilt då formaliserade språkbedömningar kan vara svåradministrerade med små barn. Detta kan exempelvis göras via föräldraenkäter. Studiens syfte var att undersöka vilka likheter och skillnader som förelåg mellan bedömningar av språklig förmåga hos barn, gjorda dels av föräldrar och förskolepersonal via en enkät, dels av logopedstudenter via en logopedisk bedömning. Studiedeltagarna utgjordes av 20 barn i åldrarna 2 ½ - 3 år, 20 föräldrar och 14 förskolepersonal. Föräldrar och förskolepersonal besvarade 18 frågor ur föräldraenkäten Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Test - 2 (REEL-2) och barnen testades av logopedstudenterna på uppgifter motsvarande dessa frågor.Resultatet visade bland annat att de genomsnittliga procentuella överensstämmelserna mellan bedömargrupperna var goda.

This thesis considers the problems associated with searches in insufficiently geographically tagged data. The thesis was carried out at Booli Search Technologies AB, a company developing a search engine for the Swedish real estate market.The aim of the thesis is to identify some areas of possible improvements of the company?s existing technical platform, perform a benchmarking among similar services, suggest possible solutions and lastly, build a prototype from one of the suggested solutions.The thesis starts out with defining the problems that the search engine faces: some areas are not possible to perform searches on, the users are not presented with the full search result that they expect, some results are placed incorrectly on the map associated with the search results and results are also not described with enough geographical information. These problems are due to the fact that the data retrieved at the indexing stage in the company?s information retrieval process are insufficient and incomplete.As a result of a benchmarking process and after discussing the results, severalinteresting solutions were identified.

The Swedish School Board reported in 2007 that students with a foreign background to a larger extent than Swedish students leave school without grades in one or more subjects in the ninth grade. The report also reveals that during the year 2007/2008 17 percent of elementary school pupils had the right to home language instruction. Students with an other mother tongue than Swedish are considered a separate group that doesn?t perform as well in school.My study investigates how eleven Arabic-speaking ninth-graders at age 15-16 perceive the importance of their mother tongue for learning and identity development. To this purpose I have conducted semi-structured interviews ? one comprising six students in group and five individual ? in a school in one of the suburbs of Stockholms.

The purpose with my essay was to investigate how genre pedagogy works in a practical manor? I wanted to reach a deeper understanding for the genre pedagogy and to find out if it fits all students. To investigate this issue I have asked following questions:What is genre pedagogy?How do teachers work with different genres in the genre pedagogy?For whom is the genre pedagogy?Is the critic right that Frøydis Hertzberg is proposing about the genre pedagogy formalism? I have been using qualitative methods, to gather my empirical data. I have been using two unstructured interviews and one unsystematically observation, in a third grade class in a school south of Stockholm, with 30% second language students.

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.

Informationsso?kningar av olika slag sker dagligen va?rlden o?ver och so?kresultatet kan ma?nga ga?nger vara sa? stort att anva?ndarna har sva?rt att veta vilka so?kresultat som a?r relevanta. I denna uppsats har syftet varit att underso?ka hur so?kresultat kan filtreras och sorteras med hja?lp av platsbaserad so?kning fo?r att det ska bli mer relevant fo?r anva?ndaren. Genom litteraturstudie och intervjuer har det blivit mo?jligt att ta reda pa? hur ett so?kresultat skulle kunna filtreras och sorteras fo?r att mo?ta anva?ndarnas fo?rva?ntningar.

This Bachelor?s thesis focuses on those terms that, from a Swedish perspective, have to be fulfilled to entitle deduction for definitive losses in a cross-border merger situation. The thesis analyses one of the ten rulings from the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court which were published in 2009.The ruling is analysed in the light of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the merger directive and the Court of Justice rulings in Marks & Spencer and Lidl. The purpose is to examine if the Swedish rules concerning cross-border mergers is compatible with the EU-law. The Swedish rules concerning mergers are found in chapter 37 in the Swedish income tax act.

My purpose in this paper is to study teachers' work in reading and writing in primary school and special school. I want to find out if they use the same methods, strategies and materials to help students learn to read and write. I will find out the answer to my purpose by performing two qualitative observation and two qualitative interviews. Lundberg (2010) is the researcher I relate to during my study. Through observation, I see how teachers work with students in the classroom during a lesson in the Swedish language. During the interviews, I received answers to how teachers work with language, the materials, methods and strategies they use. I found out that teachers use specific strategies when they help their students. They use a work material that is tailored to curriculum in Swedish language and it is based on the phonics method. .