The need for second language learning is increasing in today?s multicultural and globalized society, and adult studies are becoming more common. Teachers must encourage all students, and all schools need to promote equality. Motivation is one of the most important factors for positive learning and progress, and it can be helpful for second language teachers to know more about this subject. The aim of this study was to examine which motivational factors that influence adult immigrants to learn Swedish through SFI education in Sweden.

The Division of Language and Communication at Chalmers uses a web-based language tool, named EngOnline, to teach English grammar. The language tool suffers from some shortcomings. These include stability problems and an outdated interface but, above all, there is no documentation. Because of the lack of documentation and EngOnline?s need of maintenance, the Division of Language and Communication has decided to replace the language tool with a new and well documented one.The new language tool was developed using an agile work process; detailed documentation was replaced with more efficient communication.

The present research examined both automatic and controlled processes in newpapers ability of priming racial stereotypes via the portrayals of people of foreign extraction. The automatic process were examined through articles which; a) involved an illegal act or b) the act was not illegal but morally questionable. Swedish-born subject?s explicit opinions against foreign people were also measured through ?The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale?. In the experiment participants read four different articles which included; Swedish person/noncrime, foreign person/noncrime, Swedish person/crime and foreign person/crime.

My study is about a preparation class in a selected municipality. It is based on the child¹s perspective, and it tries to highlight the school situation of new arrivals in a school where the majority of the pupils are of Swedish origin. The purpose of my study is to visualize how the education for newly arrived children is organized in the municipality, and to get an understanding of a range of student?s view of the schooling in the preparation class as an introduction to a regular class.To reach my goal, I have used qualitative methods, based on qualitative interviews. The interviews were made with six newly arrived pupils, and one interview was made with the deputy head of the school, which is in charge of immigrant education in the municipality.

 ABSTRACTThis study focuses on immigrant women in Sweden and how their perceptions of resource loss may affect their motivation to learn Swedish. Focus group discussions were conducted with immigrant women who partake in a Swedish language learning project. Their Swedish language skills were very limited, and all of them had no or very few years of elementary level education. Results of the study suggest that the strongest motivator to learn Swedish is its potential role in facilitating everyday activities.    .

It is important that the language in textbooks for foreign language learners reflects the language that the learners would encounter in real life. For this reason, the presence of the thousand most common nouns in two Swedish textbooks in Spanish for upper secondary school is observed in this study. Furthermore, this study aims to examine how these nouns occur in order to determine if their pattern of occurence favours the learning and consolidation of words. The main materials that have been used are A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish by Davies (2006) and the word search program available in the digital versions of the textbooks. The results show that the presence of the thousand most common Spanish nouns does reflect the frequency information presented in the frequency dictionary but not all thousand nouns are included.

The aim of this paper is to examine how young men of foreign background are pictured in the realistic adolescence novels of 2009. In my process of work I have used a classical schedule for literature analysis from which I have worked out a few questions to use on my texts. The questions are related to the main characters and some of the most important minor characters ? all are young men with foreign background ? and focuses on aspects of for example where they live, who their friends are and what they think about and dream of.To put these pictures into a wider perspective I compare my results with the well known stereotype picturing of men with foreign background in media. I then discuss how or if this affects the young men?s picture of themselves and the majority society?s picture of them.

Sweden's population holds today one of the highest life expectancies in the world and an increasing number of Swedes believe that they have good health. However, the problem still remains that there exists significant differences in health between different population groups and neighborhoods. Two neighborhoods that demonstrate high inequality in health status are Rinkeby and Danderyd in Stockholm County.    The purpose of this study was to examine why health differs between different neighborhoods and how residents experience the area and their health. To answer this purpose a combination of statistical data and qualitative interviews with residents in Danderyd and Rinkeby has been used with an additional literature review.      The study showed that the causes of health inequalities between these neighborhoods was primarily concerned with the factors of education, economic conditions, ethnicity, conditions of comfort and companionship and the surrounding residential environment. The population in Danderyd, made up largely of people with high education, good economic conditions and few foreign-born, while the majority of Rinkeby?s population consists of individuals with low education, poor economic conditions and a high proportion of inhabitants of foreign origin, which are determining factors leading to poorer health status among the population.

Study aimed to see if the language has bearing on mathematics learning. The study used qualitative interviews of three first grade teachers and one special education teacher.The questions asked was:Do the teachers and specialist teacher, at the selected schools, think there is a connection between language difficulties and difficulties in mathematics and in case how is this connection.How does the teachers / specialist teacher make it easier for students to learn mathematics and swedish.The study was based on Vygotsky and Piaget teories. In previous research, it is primarily Malmer, Hoines, Lowing and Kilborn who´s been treated. Within the governing documents, it is mainly the compulsory school curriculum Lpo-94, and the curriculum for mathematics treated.I hope that the study has conclude that there is a connection between language and mathematics learning.I tried to emerged this through interviews with tree teachers and one special teatcher but i couldn´t. The teatchers couldn`t fint that it was the only reason to why the pupils hade difficulties in mathematics.But in the literature I found the relation between language- and mathematicdificulties..

Grammar is one of the most problematic areas when it comes to teaching a language; to know if or when, and how grammar should be taught, are relevant questions to all language teachers. The aim of the study was to investigate teachers? attitudes towards teaching grammar, and how much, how and why they use the methods that they do. Therefore semi-structured interviews were undertaken with six 9th grade English teachers. The main results showed that all six teachers were positive to formal instruction, and they considered implicit knowledge of grammar superior to explicit knowledge.

The purpose of my examination is contributing with knowledge about the relation between language- stimulation in preschool and read- and writes developing and teachers thought about that. In order to meet the purpose I read literature that deals with my matter and is based previous research. I also made qualitative interviews with three elementary school teachers and three preschool teachers who work within preschools that concentrate on development of language in a town in the middle of Sweden.  In this way I find out about their thoughts about what they think is important to work with about language in preschool and how the preschool teachers can work with the development of language to make it easier for the children in their read- and writes developing. The result shows that it is important to work with children?s development of language in preschool.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to analyse the reading- and writing-approaches: the LTG-method and the whole language-theory. The attention is to perform a comparative literate-study to distinguish their similarities and differences, and examine which one of the approaches that is most clearly anchored in the syllabus of the subject Swedish. The starting-point of the study is the questions: Which similarities respectively differences have the LTG-method and the whole language-theory? Which one of these theories is most clearly anchored in the syllabus of the subject Swedish? The study has shown that both the whole language-theory and the LTG-method can anchor in the syllabus for Swedish. However the whole language-theory has stronger hold in the syllabus, as the whole language emphasises the meaning of literature for reading- and writing-learning, and considers the pupils reflection during their learning-process and conquered knowledge-goal.

English is an international and global language that students, regardless of mother tongue, encounter in their everyday lives. In Sweden, students are introduced to English teaching in year 1, 2 or 3, and in some cases, year 4. English teaching can sometimes be problematic when the language of instruction often consists of Swedish, which for second language students becomes a challenge to acquire new skills in a week language.The study aims to examine, with a qualitative study, how pedagogues plan and implements English teaching in first grade with students whose mother tongue are other than Swedish. Further, the aim was to examine how pedagogues say they relate to the fact that second language pupils participating in English lessons and if they think it affects their English teaching.The conclusions is that the pedagogues has probably not been problematized the phenomenon examined and say they do not adapt their teaching. In the interviews reveals information about the teaching method which, in my opinion, indicates that, unconsciously, adapting their teaching when they have second language students.

The purpose of my study has been to find out how mother tongue teachers working in preschools where a majority of the children have a mother tongue other than Swedish make use of fictional children?s books during the mother tongue support lessons. In order to determine this, I am asking the following questions:- What is the range of children's books in the children's mother tongue available at the preschool?- In what ways are the native language teachers encouraging literacy development through the usage of children's books?- How do native language teachers view the childrens? linguistic development as well as the enhancement of cultural identity through the usage of the books?These questions have formed the basis of the methodical approach, which is based on a qualitative research method. The data collection consists of three parts; the observation of mother tongue support, interviews with language teachers as well as with the nursery manager and lastly a survey of children's books in languages other than Swedish at the preschool.The essay has as its theoretical basis the socio-cultural view of learning and development.

With background in the acknowledgement of the current period of major change in the characteristics of traditional Swedish foreign policy, considering the membership in the European Union, as well as the new contextual scenarios that Sweden has been situated in after the end of the cold war, this thesis aims at scrutinizing the Swedish Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2010. The purpose of the thesis is further to localize continuity and change in the ideas which Sweden has explicitly stated in its foreign policy. Based on the theory of institutionalism, the thesis also aims to bring forward plausible explanations built on the main empirical findings. This has been done by identifying different types of goals and means within realism and liberalism as well as categorizing each theory within three ideal types.The chosen research method has been a qualitative text analysis with focus on an ideational analysis. The material on which the descriptive analysis is based upon is constituted by the annual statements of government policy in parliamentary debates on foreign affairs.The results of the thesis show that the ideas that are related to solidarity, consensus and active foreign policy are constant through the period of examination.