| 1. |
- Halwani, Manar, 1981-
(författare)
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Engagement, directed motivational currents, and second language learning : adult immigrant perspectives
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation answers calls for the integration of motivation and engagement theory and research among highly educated adult-migrant language learners. Specifically, the purpose of this dissertation is to propose a model to describe the interactions between the motivation construct Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs) and the engagement construct Engagement with Language (EWL). The site of this dissertation is Sweden and hence the language learners of this dissertation were learning Swedish to enter the Swedish employment market. This thesis is a qualitative study with a social-dynamic approach to DMCs and EWL, and second language learning is viewed as a highly interactive process. The dissertation consists of three studies. Each study is based in a different formal language learning setting with the following groups of participants: (1) voluntary migrants with university degrees; (2) voluntary and forced migrant medical doctors, and (3) forced migrant schoolteachers. Semi-structured interviews, observation, and questionnaires were used to collect data to describe DMCs and EWL in concert. The findings of the thesis are that the lenses of DMCs and EWL can be combined to reveal more detail about highly educated adult-migrant language learners learning than earlier models. The findings also suggested ways in which the DMCs and EWL constructs interact, and that these are influenced by learners’ visions of their current and future selves, and by effective profession-oriented language teaching. Based on the analysis of the data from the three studies a novel model, Engagement in Directed Motivational Currents (EDMCs), is posited. This novel model captures the multidirectional interaction between DMCs and EWL, and how DMCs are nurtured by cognitive, affective and social engagement, and EWL is energized by motivational structure and goal, and emotionality. The posited model has relevance for second language pedagogy beyond highly educated migrant adult language learning contexts, and for future research in the area of long-term motivation and EWL in relation to second language learning.
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| 2. |
- Halwani, Manar, 1981-
(författare)
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Engagement, directed motivational currents, and second language learning : adult immigrant perspectives
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation answers calls for the integration of motivation and engagement theory and research among highly educated adult-migrant language learners. Specifically, the purpose of this dissertation is to propose a model to describe the interactions between the motivation constructDirected Motivational Currents (DMCs) and the engagement construct Engagement with language (EWL). The site of this dissertation is Sweden and hence the language learners of this dissertation were learning Swedish to enter the Swedish employment market. This thesis is a qualitative study with a social-dynamic approach to DMCs and EWL, and second language learning is viewed as a highly interactive process. The dissertation consists of three studies. Each study is based in a different formal language learning setting with the following groups of participants: (1) voluntary migrants with university degrees; (2) voluntary and forced migrant medical doctors, and (3) forced migrant schoolteachers. Semi-structured interviews, observations, and questionnaires were used to collect data to describe DMCs and EWL in concert. The findings of the thesis are that the lenses of DMCs and EWL can be combined to reveal more detail about highly educated adult-migrant language learners' learning than earlier models. The findings also suggested ways in which the DMCs and EWL constructs interact, and that these are influenced by learners’ visions of their current and future selves, and by effective profession-oriented language teaching. Based on the analysis of the data from the three studies a novel model, Engagement inDirected Motivational Currents (EDMCs), is posited. This novel model captures the multidirectional interaction between DMCs and EWL, and how DMCs are nurtured by cognitive, affective, and social engagement, and EWL is energized by motivational structure and goal, and emotionality. The posited model has relevance for second language pedagogy beyond highly educated migrant adult language learning contexts, and for future research in the area of long-term motivation and EWL in relation to second language learning.
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| 3. |
- Wintersparv, Spoke, 1977-
(författare)
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Teaching the reading experience : upper secondary teachers’ perspectives on aesthetic aspects of literature teaching
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Written fiction is a cornerstone in upper secondary Swedish first language (L1) studies. However, in a time when international assessments in education create and maintain a focus on measurability, non-measurable aspects of literature teaching might not be given the same attention in the literature classroom. One of those aspects is the reader’s immersion in a text through an aesthetic experience, which is often why readers turn to fiction. This would mean that one of the main incentives to read fiction is separated from literature teaching in school.In my thesis, I examine the experiential nature of Swedish upper secondary L1 literature teaching from teachers’ perspectives, and the role of the Reading Experience—that is, the immersion in a text through thoughts, feelings, and reactions that readers experience during reading—in the literature classroom. In doing so, I employ focus group interviews, an online questionnaire, individual interviews, and participant observations within a theoretical framework comprising ideas by Dewey about art as communication, Felski’s theory about modes of textual engagement, Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory, and Langer’s concept of Envisionment. Although stipulated learning goals in the curriculum and the current focus on measurability downplay experiential aspects, the findings indicated that individual teachers create a space for it in their literature teaching. This means that students’ access to the Reading Experience is dependent on individual priorities, which entails a risk of arbitrariness and inequivalent education. Thus, if all students are to be granted a holistic teaching approach that regards the measurable and the instrumental as well as the intangible and experiential, all teachers have to take it into account in their teaching. Without this holism, there is a risk that students will attain literacy proficiency at the expense of their literature proficiency.
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| 4. |
- Hendrick, Stephanie, 1977-
(författare)
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Beyond the Blog
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines weblog community as a materially afforded and socially constructed space. In a set of three case studies, this dissertation examines three separate weblog communities between 2004 and 2008. CASE STUDY I looks at knowledge management bloggers in order to better understand how bloggers form communities. In this case study, it will be shown that blogs group thematically and in temporal bursts. These bursts of thematic activity allow for movement in and out of a community, as well as act as a bridge between different weblog communities. CASE STUDY II examines two pseudonymous bloggers in order to better understand how presentation and identity is understood in blogging. It will be shown in CASE STUDY II that social identity in weblog communities is negotiated through blogging practices such as transparency in writing and truthful presentation. CASE STUDY III delves further into social identity by examining a community of academic bloggers and how traditional, institutionalized expectations influence social identity over time, and if this influence differs in the core and periphery of the community. It will be shown in CASE STUDY III that there is indeed a difference in how social identity is negotiated and performed between core and periphery members of a weblog community. Finally, a model towards an integrated approach to researching blogs is put forth.
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| 5. |
- Levlin, Maria, 1971-
(författare)
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Lässvårigheter, språklig förmåga och skolresultat i tidiga skolår : en undersökning av 44 elever i årskurs 2 till 3
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I skolverkets rapporter framkommer att ca 15-20 % av eleverna inte klarar nationella proven i grundskolan. Varje år går även alltför många elever ut grundskolan utan behörighet till något av de nationella gymnasieprogrammen. Det finns ett behov av mer kunskap om vilka elever som riskerar att inte nå målen för att underlätta tidig identifiering. Läsförmåga och språkförståelse är några av de faktorer som i tidigare studier visat sig påverka utfallet i skolresultat. I den här studien undersöks hur lässvårigheter i tidiga skolår relaterar till språkförståelse, samt hur lässvårigheter och variationer i språkförståelsen påverkar skolresultaten i nationella proven i åk 3. I studien deltog 44 elever med positivt utfall i en screening av läsförståelse, avkodning och stavning i åk 2. Svag läsförståelse i åk 2 innebar en större risk för språkförståelsesvårigheter i åk 3. Elever med enbart avkodnings- eller stavningssvårigheter i åk 2 hade däremot en god språkförståelse i åk 3. Språkförståelsen visade i sin tur signifikanta samband med utfallet i läsförståelse i ämnesprovet i svenska och med 5 av 6 delprov i matematik i nationella proven i åk 3. En viktig implikation blir att inkludera även språkförståelse i arbetet med elever som har läsförståelsesvårigheter. Studiens resultat indikerar att det inte räcker med en bättre avkodningsförmåga för att uppnå en god läsförståelse. Det krävs även insatser för att främja ordförråd, grammatisk kompetens och förståelsestrategier på diskursnivå. En hög andel av eleverna som inte fick godkänt i delproven i svenska respektive matematik i åk 3 var identifierade i screeningen redan i åk 2. Det här indikerar att det är möjligt att använda en screening av läsförmågan i åk 2 för att identifiera vilka elever som riskerar att inte klara läroplanens mål. Samtidigt var det många elever med svag läs- och stavningsförmåga i åk 2 som ändå klarade nationella proven. Den här studiens resultat indikerar att det framförallt är eleverna med läsförståelsesvårigheter som riskerar att inte klara nationella proven, medan eleverna med enbart avkodnings- eller stavningssvårigheter klarar nationella proven betydligt bättre. Det behövs däremot fortsatta longitudinella studier för att klargöra i vilken mån de elever som klarade de nationella proven i åk 3 trots lässvårigheter även kommer att klara nationella prov och läroplanens mål på längre sikt.
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| 6. |
- Outakoski, Hanna, 1978-
(författare)
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Multilingual literacy among young learners of North Sámi : contexts, complexity and writing in Sápmi
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis presents an investigation of the complexities of the immediate, ideological, educational, and societal contexts for literacy development among North Sámi learners between the ages of 9 and 15 who live in Northern Finland, Norway and Sweden in the central regions of Sápmi. Further, this thesis focuses on one area of literacy, namely writing. It examines these children’s writing, its phases and peculiarities, writing strategies, and the nature of transitions that these multilingual writers experience in switching between North Sámi, English and their respective national majority language. The main body of the collected materials consists of computer mediated pupil texts that the author gathered at 10 schools that arranged compulsory schooling in Central Sápmi during the school year 2012-2013. The texts were collected using keytroke logging methodology that not only records the final written product but also keeps track of changes and other writing activity during the writing session. Other materials collected and analyzed in this study include questionnaires addressed to the pupils, their parents, and to their language teachers. The materials also include detailed interviews with with 24 teachers from the participating schools. This study consists of six individual papers that focus at 1) research methodological aspects that concern studying Indigenous populations, 2) language attitudes, ideologies and available language arenas that have an impact on biliteracy emergence in North Sámi speaking Sápmi, or 3) the qualities and characteristics of multilingual pupil's writing and texts. The implications of the six individual papers are analyzed with respect to language revitalization and biliteracy emergence using the Hornbergian Continua of Biliteracy as the overarching theoretical framework. North Sámi, English and the national majority languages in the respective countries are constantly present in the lives of Sámi learners. Young Sámi learners grow up to be multilingual citizens of the global north through this extensive exposure to many languages and cultures from multiple sources such as popular culture, literature, media, community, tourism, and school. In their writing, multilingual Sámi learners show a wide spectrum of strategies and knowledge that carries over from one language to another. Nevertheless, most young Sámi learners cannot draw on equally many points on their Continua of Biliteracy in all their languages. Due to factors such as scarcity of adequate teaching materials, lack of popular culture and media content in Sámi languages, and language compartmentalizing language ideologies, the scales on the continua of biliteracy are in severe imbalance for many Sámi learners. Many Sámi learners risk losing their indigenous heritage language because the non-indigenous languages are prevalent in school as well as out of school contexts.
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| 7. |
- Stölten, Katrin, 1977-
(författare)
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The Effects of Age of Onset on VOT in L2 Aquisition and L1 Attrition : A Study of the Speech Production and Perception of Advanced Spanish-Swedish Bilinguals
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores the role of age in second language (L2) acquisition and first language (L1) attrition. The focus is on Voice Onset Time (VOT) in the production and categorical perception of word-initial L1 and L2 stops in highly advanced L1 Spanish learners of L2 Swedish. Using as the point of departure a maturational constraints perspective and the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), Study I examines the impact of age of onset (AO) of L2 acquisition on the production of L2 Swedish voiceless stops. The results show that there are AO effects even in the speech of highly advanced L2 learners and that the incidence of nativelike L2 learners is considerably lower than earlier assumed. However, conclusions like these are only possible when speaking rate is accounted for, thereby highlighting the importance of speaking rate effects on VOT as a measure of nativelikeness. Like Study I, Study II reveals age effects on the same L2 learners’ categorical perceptions of L2 Swedish stops. Moreover, after combining the results with the data from Study I, the incidence of nativelike behavior drops remarkably with no late L2 learner performing within the range of native-speaker production and perception. The results suggest that L2 acquisition of phonetic/phonological aspects is especially sensitive to AO effects. It is concluded that theories on maturational constraints, including the CPH, cannot be refuted on the basis of the present data. Study III concerns the same participants’ production and perception of L1 Spanish stops. Age of reduced contact (ARC) is identified as an important predictor for L1 attrition and retention of voiceless stop production, although not of stop perception. This discrepancy is related to different activation thresholds as proposed by the Activation Threshold Hypothesis (ATH). It is further suggested that early bilinguals are more dependent on high-frequency L1 use than late bilinguals when compensating for age effects, but only in production.
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| 8. |
- Busic, Vesna, et al.
(författare)
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Lessons for Today from Successful Women : Forced Migrants’ Language Biographies
- 2022
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Ingår i: Literacies in the Age of Mobility. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783030833169 - 9783030833176 ; , s. 51-76
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter considers the language biographies narrated by two female forced migrants from the area of the former Yugoslavia that is now Bosnia. We analyse these to access defining traumatic and agentic moments towards high-level language and literacy skills in Swedish. They arrived, along with many other forced migrants fleeing the Balkan wars, during a deep economic recession. The immigrant group has outperformed other forced migrant groups in Sweden and these language biographies provide pertinent insights into adaption, and the route to the achievement of high-level literacy and language competencies. These insights should be viewed broadly and not as prototypical for forced migrants. Our findings suggest agentic acts of proactive language- and literacy-learning need to be interwoven across an individual’s social, academic, and working life.
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| 9. |
- Eriksson, Erik J., 1978-
(författare)
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That voice sounds familiar : factors in speaker recognition
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Humans have the ability to recognize other humans by voice alone. This is important both socially and for the robustness of speech perception. This Thesis contains a set of eight studies that investigates how different factors impact on speaker recognition and how these factors can help explain how listeners perceive and evaluate speaker identity. The first study is a review paper overviewing emotion decoding and encoding research. The second study compares the relative importance of the emotional tone in the voice and the emotional content of the message. A mismatch between these was shown to impact upon decoding speed. The third study investigates the factor dialect in speaker recognition and shows, using a bidialectal speaker as the target voice to control all other variables, that the dominance of dialect cannot be overcome. The fourth paper investigates if imitated stage dialects are as perceptually dominant as natural dialects. It was found that a professional actor could disguise his voice successfully by imitating a dialect, yet that a listener's proficiency in a language or accent can reduce susceptibility to a dialect imitation. Papers five to seven focus on automatic techniques for speaker separation. Paper five shows that a method developed for Australian English diphthongs produced comparable results with a Swedish glide + vowel transition. The sixth and seventh papers investigate a speaker separation technique developed for American English. It was found that the technique could be used to separate Swedish speakers and that it is robust against professional imitations. Paper eight investigates how age and hearing impact upon earwitness reliability. This study shows that a senior citizen with corrected hearing can be as reliable an earwitness as a younger adult with no hearing problem, but suggests that a witness' general cognitive skill deterioration needs to be considered when assessing a senior citizen's earwitness evidence. On the basis of the studies a model of speaker recognition is presented, based on the face recognition model by V. Bruce and Young (1986; British Journal of Psychology, 77, pp. 305 - 327) and the voice recognition model by Belin, Fecteau and Bédard (2004; TRENDS in Cognitive Science, 8, pp. 129 - 134). The merged and modified model handles both familiar and unfamiliar voices. The findings presented in this Thesis, in particular the findings of the individual papers in Part II, have implications for criminal cases in which speaker recognition forms a part. The findings feed directly into the growing body of forensic phonetic and forensic linguistic research.
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| 10. |
- Karlsson, Fredrik, 1975-
(författare)
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The acquisition of contrast : a longitudinal investigation of initial s+plosive cluster development in Swedish children
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Thesis explores the development of word-initial s+plosive consonant clusters in the speech of Swedish children between the ages of 1;6 and 4;6. Development in the word-initial consonant clusters is viewed as being determined by 1) the children’s ability to articulate the target sequence of consonants, 2) the level of understanding of which acoustic features in the adult model production are significant for the signalling of the intended distinction, and 3) the children’s ability to apply established production patterns only to productions where the acquired feature agrees with the adult target, to achieve a contrast between rival output forms. This Thesis employs a method where output forms are contrasted with attempted productions of potential homonym target words. Thus, development is quantified as an increase in the manifestations of phonetic features where it agrees with the adult norm, coupled by a decrease in the same feature in output forms where it is inappropriate according to the specifications of the phonological system of the ambient language. Acoustic investigations of cues of voicing, aspiration, place of articulation and syllable onset complexity, and auditory investigations of place, manner and syllable onset complexity were conducted. The Thesis has four outcomes. One, a description of the perceptual quality of the productions in terms of place, manner, voicing and syllable onset complexity is presented. Two, a developmental sequence of stable acquisition of these features is proposed; manner is shown to be acquired first, followed by syllable onset complexity and place of articulation. Evidence is provided that the voiced/aspirated distinction is still being acquired at the end of the investigated age period. Three, the developmental use of acoustic cues of place and voicing are described. Voice Onset Time and Spectral Skewness are shown to be used by children in order to increase the likeness to the adult target in terms of voicing and place of articulation. Aspiration Amplitude is shown to be used as an auxiliary cue to Voice Onset Time. The place cues Spectral Tilt Change, F2, Spectral Mean and Spectral Variance were shown to be used in order to refine already produced consonants rather than approach the adult target model. Four, the Thesis provides evidence of periods of confusions in the output of children. With the reductions of these patterns of confusion, evidence is provided of children’s re-organisation of their internal representation of the consonant to be produced.
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