We want in this paper, by using participant observation and qualitative interviews, comecloser to an understanding of what meaning a language café might have for the peoplewho go there. Many of the visitors are people who recently moved to Sweden and are inthe middle of a process of learning Swedish. We want to get a further insight into howthey feel about their situation and what the social encounters on the language café mightmean to them. The purpose is to examine how this can have significance for the identitydevelopment of the visitors.The result shows that the language café is an important place for the visitors because itis the only place they can go to in order to practice speaking Swedish, which isimportant for them to find their place in Sweden. The language café also fulfils animportant function of a place where the visitors can receive an understanding of theSwedish society and reflect about it, but also a place for self-reflection to see theopportunities in the situations they find themselves in.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the special education, for children with language impairment in preschool, was organised in a municipality in Sweden. The study was based on interviews and field studies as the primary research tools in qualitative and ethnographic method. The result showed that special education teachers were localised in different geographic areas of school and that there were preschools that lacked special educational expertise in language impairment. Literature and the importance of playing for language development were emphasised as well as the use of signs and visual aids as augmentative and alternative communication. In the preschool for children with language impairment, the teachers carried their knowledge into practical and pedagogical work.

Since storytelling is a growing form of teaching we wanted to interview teachers to see what their experiences and opinions were on the subject. Therefore the purpose of this study is to use interviews to examine teacher perceptions and experiences about storytelling and its effect on language development. I will investigate both the use when the teacher is telling a story but also when students are telling stories. With help from my supervisor I was able to come up with interview questions that would help me answer my research question. After the interviews I reviewed the answers and analyzed them.

The purpose of this essay is to describe how preschool teachers think about language stimulation and how they work with it when it comes to small children in preschool. My research questions were:? What kind of methods do the preschool teachers use? And what kind of work procedure do they have?? Is there any difference in the work procedure when it comes to daily routines and playtime?? How do the preschool teachers describe their work procedure with language stimulation?To be able to reach my purpose and answer my questions, I decided to make a case study. I have made observations of the preschool teachers and how they work and I have made interviews. The material that I have used, beside observations and interviews, is literature that is about earlier research about this matter.The result of the study shows that the preschool teachers considers their work with language stimulation as part of everything they do.

The purpose with this study has been to get a previous knowledge about how pre-school teachers look at the impact of the picture book for children and their language development and participation at the age of three to five years. The study was carried through inquiries at a pre-school in a west Swedish urban district. The study proceed from the sociocultural theory which means that children learn by teamwork with other more experienced individuals. The result shows that the pre-school teachers consciously let the interest of the children guide the choice of books. At the same time they push for the meaning of conversation with the children.

Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language -3 is an American picturebasedtest developed to examine children?s auditory comprehension of language.The aim of the study was to create a translation and to examine if the test wouldcontribute to the information about a child´s language comprehension received bysimilar tests that are used today. In the present study the test items were translatedinto Swedish. The translation was evaluated with 32 children in three different agegroups at a school in central Gothenburg. A linguistic examination of thetranslation and a list of the grammatical structures that are tested were made.

Sweden introduced a development assistance policy in 1952 and thirteen years later Sida, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency started, in 1965. But in 1995, five separate development assistance authorities came together and established the new Sida as it is today. Sida is Sweden?s representative in the development assistance policy field and they work through projects that have to be presented through a Country Strategy Process (CSP). The aim of this paper is to point out Sida?s perspective on the conducted development assistance policy and what guide lines that are followed.

The aim of this study was to investigate, illuminate and discuss teacher?s and multilingual student?s view on the connection between their mother tongue and their learning of other languages. This qualitative study is based on interviews with eight students in the 8th grade and two language-teachers from the same school, as well as ethnographic observations during English and Swedish lessons. With the help of some relevant theories, the empirical study is compared, analyzed and interpreted. The results show that the theories and informant?s view on the connection between the mother tongue and other languages are similar, which is that the mother tongue must be fully established before a new language can be taken in..

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate how librarians approach to the multicultural collection development and which methods they use in providing library materials in minority languages. The questions to be answered are: which methods the libraries use when purchasing library materials in minority languages, how the respondents experience that the minority user groups needs are met in the library and how the multicultural competence of the staff is used in the libraries. For this purpose the qualitative interviews with 6 librarians in Gothenburg are conducted, mainly from the libraries in the immigrant-dense parts of the city, while the study being concentrated on 6 language groups of library users. The study?s theoretical framework is based on theories of multiculturalism, culture, identity and bilingualism.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the implications and challenges of intercultural communication. An in-depth study was performed of the perspectives from people who work within an international organization. How they experience cultural differences and how they handle them, in particular when it comes to communication. Also, their perceptions of communicative competence were explored. The study was carried out at Svalorna India Bangladesh, at the Swedish office in Lund.

This essay is a combination of an interview, survey and an observation that involves seven different teachers and thirty-eight pupils in a school situated in a suburb of Stockholm. The purpose of my research is an attempt to give a picture of how a team of teachers in a primary school act together when teaching maths, as the majority of the pupils have another mother tounge than Swedish. Yet another purpose of this essay is to examine what possibilities this team of teachers have in trying to develop the Swedish language within other bilingual pupils and at the same time develop their math comprehension. I have chosen to initiate the theoreti-cal starting point through the points of Rodell-Olgac & Rönnberg & Rönnberg; these authors discuss the importance of language comprehension when it comes to developing ones math skills. I have reached the conclusion in my examination that it is important to raise the impor-tance of language comprehension within math-education.

With increased globalization more companies are sending their employees abroad in order for the company?s survival on the market. Many studies in the field of International Business describe unsuccessful foreign assignments and the importance of intercultural support regarding expatriation. Due to the fact that company X is an international organization we found an interest in studying how the company handles their expatriation process in Sweden. This became the purpose of our study.

One of the largest work areas for speech and language pathologists is intervention for children with speech and language disorders. The purpose of the present study was to describe and analyze the clinical management of language impairment in children by studying and comparing medical records and literature from the years 2000 and 2009. The present study is a sequel to two previously published papers by Christina Samuelsson (1997; 1999), in which medical records and literature from the 1920-, 60- and 70?s were studied and a paper by Helén Sämfors (2001), in which the years 1985 and 1995 were studied. The medical records used in the present study came from a medical ward for speech and language pathology at a university hospital in Sweden. The results showed that significantly more children were referred to the clinic for speech and language problems in 2009 than in 2000, and more children were treated for their impairments.

The aim of this essay is to study five teachers' perceptions and experiences of a multicultural class. I want to find out how they relate to intercultural education and how they experience that they may apply it.Sweden is a multicultural society. This fact is even reflected in the school and this imposes on teachers finding new ways to educate and prepare their students for the multicultural society.I chose to carry out a qualitative survey and interviewed five teachers having contact with a multicultural class. The study also offers suggestions to future teachers who can benefit from it in terms of adopting convenient attitudes in multicultural classes with better understanding.The outcome reached shows that the interviewed teachers try to make use of intercultural pedagogy by addressing differences between students, adapting teaching to supply for the needs of students, and also by having good contact with parents. But teachers also experience difficulties.

This thesis is about a language-stimulating activity, called the Book Teddy, which take placein Markaryd, a small municipality in southern Sweden. The activity is described and someexamples given of the Book Teddy's visits to the homes of parents and their preschool children.Similar activities in Värnamo, Kumla and Borås, which have been inspired by the BookTeddy are also described.Facts about children's psychology, language development and child language illustrate theimportance of stimulating language acquisition in the early years. An important example is"The Bristol Study", a longitudinal study of preschool children.A questionnaire was sent to 93 parents, whose children were bom in 1991. 53 parents or57% answered. The analysis was made out of these 53 questionnaires.