The teaching of modern Foreign languages within Swedish educational system has been a subject of a number of alarming reports in recent years. Several studies have shown that students lack motivation to learn any language but English. Of particular concern is the young males? underachieving and disinterest in Foreign languages. In the meantime, a number of international studies and the statistical data from Swedish national agencies of secondary and higher education (Skolverket and Högskoleverket) have indicated that Russian is one of the languages that are favoured by males. The primary goal of my case study was, therefore, to examine students? motivation to learn Russian and their attitudes towards language, community and Russian-speaking people.

Foreign aid is a very debated and controversial topic. The most recent studies have focused more on GDP growth and foreign aid correlation, however not much of the debate has focused on what kind of foreign aid should be given. The most common foreign aid is budget support, often a bilateral funds transfer between two countries. This kind of foreign aid can be both conditional and unconditional from the donors? perspective.

Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978) is the most important reference point in the post-colonial theory and describes how the West is dominant over the Orient. There is a clear distinction between "us" and "the other" and the purpose of this study is that, from a postcolonial perspective, focusing on Said's theoretical concepts "the other" and "discourse", examining how two foreign-born people with ethnic backgrounds living in the same place, are looking at themselves, at other foreign-born and native Swedes. My questions to answer this are; ?what are the concepts of "the other" and "discourse" and is it possible to use these concepts to examine how foreign-born people are looking at themselves, at other foreign-born and native Swedes in a specific location??, ?who is "the other" in a place where there are almost as many native Swedes as foreign-born??, and ?how do these two foreign-born people with ethnic backgrounds perceive Norrliden as a place and what effect has that place had on their identity?? I have used a post-colonial philosophical ground and a qualitative approach, focusing on two different interviews with two men, living in Norrliden. In Norrliden almost 50% of the inhabitants are foreign-born were both of the interview-persons are feeling safe and secure.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how large Swedish corporations within the same industry protect themselves against foreign exchange risks and to determine if there is a general practice for how the protection is done. What is the responsibility structure at these corporations regarding the handling of exposure to foreign exchange?.

The main purpose of this study was to examine how preschool teachers are working to promote each child's language development and whether they can ensure that they do that. Therefore I wanted to find out what a good language development implies for each teacher, how they work to promote each child's language development in daily practice, how they measure the actual language development and also what conditions the teachers have, to engage in a language development way to work. For the study, I chose a qualitative method, with structured interviews and all together I interviewed six preschool teachers, within the same organization in a suburb close to Stockholm.  The results showed that there is an ambiguity, among the preschool teachers, in what a good language development means, but it can be stated that they do have a language development way to work even if it needs to be developed. Further on, it has emerged that the teachers have the tools to measure children's language development, although they do not have the conditions yet to use the method to the fullest. About the preschool teachers own conditions in order to operate in a language development way to work, I concluded that they have a strong foundation to build on, but they still have much work ahead of them.

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.

This research shows and analyses how pupils in ninth grade in the nine-year compulsory school look at being multilingual, at the Swedish language and at Swedish as a second language. I also want to know if language and culture knowledge are taken care of in school as it says in official documents for the Swedish school and as it also is desired in an intercultural education. For my research I do eight interviews in a suburb school south of Stockholm.My work includes a limited account for the current research about being multilingual, Swedish as a second language and about the close relationship between language and culture. The applied theory is a social constructivist theory which in short can be explained like that we construct social structures that have consequences on the individual as well as on the society.I show in my research how the view of the world around the pupils influences their view on their languages, their school and their neighbourhood. I also draw conclusions from my interviews that language knowledge is little appreciated in school and that Swedish as a second language has a low status..

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.

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.

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.

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.