This is a thesis about 9-12-year old girls and their leisure reading. The purpose of this study is to examine their reading experiences. The method we use is a combination of qualitative interviews and studies of literature. The thesis shows that there seem to be four basic needs in girls that can be satisfied by leisure reading; the need to develop language skills; the need to be entertained; the need to gain knowledge of the world and the need to get help to resolve personal issues. The interviews with nine girls show that they primarily read for fun and that the knowledge and insights that are conveyed in literature come in second place.

The study?s aim was to examine reading ability in secondary school students. The participants; 30 grade 7 students (13 years old) and 30 grade 8 students (14 years old) without literacy problems, and eleven grade 8 students whom either had documented literacy problems or received special education for it, were selected through convenience sample. Text comprehension was tested by three texts which are called the Skobigotexts. Three reading settings were applied: listening, silent reading and silent reading with textsupport.

The purpose was to examine how the pre-schools used the public libraries in two Swedishtowns. We also examined if and how the pre-schools and the public libraries were coopera­ting.Literature showed that it is possible to stimulate children's language development and this is a duty for pre-schools and public libraries. We sent an inquiry to all pre-schools divisions in both towns. We interviewed two librarians. Our results showed that the pre-schools did use the libraries to a great extent but they didn't cooperate with the libraries in the sense that they had elaborated agreements.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine if booktalk is a good method for stimulating reading based on interviews and observations with two classes of pupils in the intermediate level of the Swedish nine-year compulsory school. Our aim is also to study the reading environment regarding of Aidan Chambers' factors about what is indispensable for a good environment for the children. The factors are: Time for reading, time for reading aloud, the stock of books and conversations about books. The study is based on interviews with 38 pupils, two booktalkers and two teachers in two different cities. It also contains two observations of booktalk.

I have in this thesis looked at the reasons for why boys, in upper school classes, read so little fiction. Several surveys show that boys in their teenage years stop reading fiction. If they read fiction it is only as a school assignment and not as leisure. There has been research done in boys attitude towards literature, but there hasn?t been any research done asking them about why they don?t read fictionI have interviewed a group of boys about their reasons, and attitude, for why they don?t choose to read fiction on their spare time after school.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.

Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky is a key figure in Soviet Russian literature. Expelled from the USSR in 1972, he became a US citizen in 1977 and Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991. In this essay, I have sought to examine the state of exile perceived in Brodsky?s poems. Using Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky?s concept of defamiliarization, I have strived to illuminate the formal composition of this state ? its technique.

In a time of increasing urbanization the human tenure effects on the land has lead to a decrease and fragmentation of areas that are valuable to urban wildlife. These actions have had a detrimental effect on the species and habitats that exist in cities and towns.This paper investigates, through the study of relevant literature and the undertaking of interviews and field visits, the role that biodiversity plays in our society. The current attitude towards urban biodiversity and the responsibility for its promotion within the landscape architect profession has been explored.This paper includes three English case studies and a design proposal investigating how one can work to promote biodiversity on a smaller scale.This paper concludes that urban biodiversity is multi-functional ? being of ecological, social and cultural significance. The landscape architecture profession must be aware of the need to combine a variety of different factors such as economical, social and environmental aspects.

This master thesis is aiming to find out how school libraries work towards children in school years 1-6. The mainfocus is how the school librarians and teachers work with literature and reading. The theoretical viewpoints aremainly the sociocultural theory and the child perspective.The study was conducted with participants from five different schools in Uppsala, in the form of qualitativesemi-structured interviews. The results show that schools work with literature first and foremost in a pragmaticway, with reading-strategies and activating discussions. Very little time is spent on reading for its own sake.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utröna vilka genusnormer som förekommer inom det skoldiskursiva fältet och huruvida skönlitteratur är en del i detta. Utgångspunken i min uppsats är att genuskodat språk inverkar på flickors och pojkars möjliga språkutveckling och identitetsskapande. De frågor som ställdes var: Uppfyller dessa texter de krav som läroplanen ställer på att ge flickor och pojkar stimulans i den språkliga utvecklingen oberoende av kön, vilka beskrivningar av genus återfinns i de skönlitterära böckerna samt har de i böckerna ingående karaktärerna olika handlingsmöjligheter och egenskaper ur ett genusperspektiv? Genom en diskursanalys av sex skönlitterära böcker läst av en år 4 har jag utkristalliserat de meningar som beskriver pojk- respektive flickprotagonister. En intervju med läraren gjordes för att ringa in hur dessa elever valt sin litteratur.

This study examines how the American comic book industry?s output is addressing the issue of Islam and in which manner the portrayal of Islam in the great American comic book universes have changed since 2001. The comic books are examined from the postcolonial perspective as formulated by Chandra Mohanty and the power and resistance-perspective as formulated by Michel Foucault. Examination of the comic books reveals far greater focus on universal values, orthopraxy and inclusive perspectives than it does on dogmatic teachings, orthodoxy and sectarianism while at the same time partly relying on generalizations and archetypes concerning Islam. To change the power balance requires what I call intervention from the objective, that is to say that ambiguity regarding Muslim characters has to be eliminated by the narrative.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.

In this essay, I compare ten different depictions of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. These depictions are all from books published between 1924 and 2000, which deal with a wider context of the history of Ireland or Northern Ireland. I relate the depictions to the point in time when they were written, the geographic focus of the book, and the views that the author expresses about the present and the future, and about the significance of history. The main result of my essay is that the depictions differ in a way that seems connected to whether or not there was an ongoing violent conflict in Ireland at the time the books were written. Texts written when the political violence was present, or close, in time and location, are likely to be written either in a neutral tone with concern about objectivity, or incorporating the Easter Rising events in context of an ongoing socialist struggle.

This is a study of the reactions of high school students in Sweden when reading A Modest proposal (Swift, 1729). If they get the chance to write whatever they want about the text, what do they find important? This study emanates from Rosenblatts (2002) view of reading out of two different stances: the aesthetical and the efferent. The aesthetical mode is reading for pleasure and experiencing the text, whilst in efferent reading the reader is primarily focused on what he or she will carry away as information from the text (Rosenblatt). To be able to categorize the material from the students more properly, a different set of ideas about reading modes, obtained from Tengberg (2011), is also presented and used in this essay..

Syftet med det här arbetet var att undersöka vad som gör att vi minns innehållet i en text vi läst och om jag som författare kan använda särskilda tekniker för att öka chansen att läsaren kommer ihåg.Mitt arbete grundar sig främst på tidigare forskning och studier gjorda på människors minne av text. Några av de teorier som har visat sig bli viktiga i mitt arbete är Wolfe och Wodwyk?s (2010) jämförelse av narrativ och förklarande text, Meyer?s (1999) ?structure strategy? och Radvansky och Zwaan?s (1998) teori om ?situation model? och ?textbase model?.För att illustrera det jag kommit fram till i mitt arbete har jag skapat en informationsbroschyr om elavbrott. Broschyren ska fungera som ett stöd och hjälpa Sveriges allmänhet att förbereda sig inför ett elavbrott.Utöver litteraturstudier har jag även gjort ett mer kvalitativt bakgrundsarbete som intervju med Tony Abaji vid Energimyndigheten och kortare samtal med målgruppen av min artefakt. Vidare har jag analyserat ett av Energimyndighetens nuvarande informationsmaterial för att identifiera dess brister.Min slutsats är att en tydligt signalerad genre och tematisk struktur i kombination med ett, för läsaren, meningsfullt innehåll är det mest effektiva för att läsaren ska minnas informationen.