Research in SLA has traditionally involved mainly well-educated language learners. Therefore, scholars have recently pointed out the need to investigate more diverse populations of L2 learners (Andringa & Godfroid 2019). The present project responds to this call by examining the role of educational background in vocabulary-learning-strategy use and vocabulary knowledge in immigrants studying L2 Swedish. Research on individual differences in SLA suggests that strategy use may affect learning outcomes and that strategies might also be successfully instructed (Griffiths, 2022). Hence one can speculate that well-educated learners have generally more efficient strategies, giving them an advantage compared to less educated learners. However, findings are inconclusive with regard to the relationship between educational background and strategic behavior (LaBontee 2019). The present study addresses this knowledge gap.

In this ongoing project, a questionnaire was distributed to 42 adult immigrants studying L2 Swedish at the A2 level. The group was heterogeneous with regard to age (Mdn = 35; IQR = 2545), length of residence in Sweden (Mdn = 4; IQR = 2–5), years of education (Mdn = 10; IQR = 9–14), and language background; the most represented L1s among the participants were Arabic, Kurdish and Farsi. Vocabulary knowledge was measured with a modified version of Bokander’s (2016) SweLT test, with items selected to match the participants’ level of L2 Swedish. Use of vocabulary-learning strategies was examined with a modified version of Labontee’s (2019) SVLSS 2.0 test. Together, these data enable us to explore interactions between educational background, vocabulary knowledge, and strategy use, while controlling for participants’ age, time of residence, and language background.

Data collected so far indicate that learners with a shorter education generally use fewer vocabulary-learning strategies, compared to learners with longer education. Importantly, learners with shorter education also appear to prefer basic strategies, like writing and rehearsing wordlists, and this preference is negatively correlated with vocabulary knowledge. In contrast, learners with longer education prefer contextual strategies, like guessing the meaning of new words, and this preference is positively correlated with vocabulary knowledge. In other words, while lesseducated learners appear to focus on rehearsing words, more well-educated learners strive to learn new words in an autonomous way, which may enable them to acquire a larger vocabulary. These results suggest that research on vocabulary-learning-strategy use in well-educated L2 learners cannot be directly generalised to other populations. In addition, the findings may be helpful for L2 teachers aiming at individualising their strategy-use instruction. 

The aim of this essay is to gain knowledge about attitudes towards the use of different varieties of English in the classroom from the perspective of seven English teachers in Swedish upper secondary school. The study was carried out through interviews with teachers from different upper secondary schools in Sweden. Qualitative interviews were used to gain information from the teachers. The results showed that the language varieties most of the teachers used were American English and British English, which had to do with what variety they were more exposed to. When asked about their students’ choices of language variety in the classroom, the teachers said that they used American English because of the frequent presence of the variety in films and television. The teachers worked with language varieties in the classroom by incorporating different varieties into the teaching using films, clips or listening comprehensions with speakers of, for example, Indian English or Australian English. Regarding the significance of working with language varieties in the classroom, the teachers said that it could develop knowledge and understanding of other people and that it could expand knowledge about the English-speaking world. In conclusion, the results showed that, even though American English and British English are the most commonly used English varieties in Swedish upper secondary schools, there are many ways teachers try to incorporate other language varieties to help students develop their English.  

Denna studie syftar till att öka kunskap kring hur undervisning av elevers muntliga förmåga inom ämnet moderna språk kan utvecklas. Studien söker svar på två centrala frågor:

1. Vilka faktorer beskriver lärare i moderna språk kan påverka elevernas utvecklande av muntlig kommunikation negativt?
2. Vilka faktorer beskriver lärare i moderna språk främjar elevernas kunskaper i tal- och samtal på målspråket?

Studien utförs med en kvalitativ metod och datainsamlingen sker genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex lärare som undervisar i ämnet moderna språk på högstadiet. Resultatet av studien visar att faktorer som stora elevgrupper, elevers brist på självförtroende och begränsat utrymme påverkar elevernas inlärning i moderna språk negativt. I undersökningen framkommer det också att lärarna pekar på vikten av att genomföra strukturerad undervisning, att etablera en inkluderande inlärningsmiljö, att skapa positiva relationer och stimulera interaktion i klassrummet, för att förebygga utmaningar och gynna elevernas språkkunskaper i tal och samtal.

This review article discusses some problems and needs for clarification that are connected with the use of the concepts culture, language, tool, and communication in Daniel Everett’s recently published book, Language: The Cultural Tool. It also discusses whether the idea of biological readiness and preparedness for language (rather than grammar) can really be disposed of as a result of Everett’s very convincing arguments against a specific genetic predisposition for the syntactic component of a grammar. Finally, it calls into question whether Everett really is true to his professed ideology of scientific ideographical pragmatism. ©2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a view of word meaning on the type level which is based on “meaning potentials” rather than on reified type meanings founded on either of the two traditional approaches of abstract generalization (Gesamtbedeutung) and typical or basic meaning (Grundbedeutung). It is suggested that actual meaning on the occurrence level is produced by context-sensitive operations of meaning activation and meaning determination which combine meaning potentials with each other and with contextually given information rather than by some simple compositionality operations yielding phrase and sentence meaning from simple type meanings of one of the two traditional kinds. To establish this goal, I first present the traditional notions and discuss some problems which arise when trying to handle variation in meaning. I then specifically discuss the relation of homonymy and polysemy to the traditional notions. In section 3, 1 introduce the notion of “meaning potentials” as an alternative to the traditional notions and then discuss in section 4 how this notion might be used to handle problems of meaning variation, focusing especially on homonymy and polysemy.

This paper discusses the relations between the semantic and the pragmatic web. After recapitulating some characterizations and definitions of the semantic and the pragmatic web two main tasks of pragmatics and of the pragmatic web are distinguished. The nature of the first of these tasks is then briefly discussed, leaving a further explication for future work. The paper ends by relating both tasks of the pragmatic web to the semantic web. Copyright 2008 ACM.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some problems in identifying stances and the features that express these stances in televised political debates where there is conflict escalation. The study is based on an analysis of video-recorded political debates in different European languages (Italian (1), German (2) and US-American English (1)) and consists of a qualitative analysis of the videos in order to understand the similarities and differences in the use of social signals for stances in conflict situations in a similar setting (televised political debate) in three western cultures. ©2012 IEEE.

There are currently two distinct but not necessarily mutually exclusive approaches to the retrieval of information from linguistic corpora. ’Corpus-driven’ approaches rely solely on the corpus itself to yield significant patterns. With the exception of orthographic spacing, no additional annotations to a ’raw’ corpus are used to guide searches and the retrieval of information from the corpus. Typically, key word in context (KWIC) analyses are applied to relevant concordance lines to extract statistically significant lexical and grammatical patterns. In ’corpus-based’ approaches, on the other hand, information is retrieved from an enriched corpus on the basis of annotations in the form of linguistic tags and annotations. That is, the annotations are used to direct the searches to specific grammatical and lexical phenomena in a corpus. In this article, we propose a corpus-based approach and a tagset to be used on a corpus of spoken language for the African languages of South Africa. A number of problematic linguistic phenomena such as fixed expressions, agglutination, morphemic merging and spoken language phenomena such as interrupted words etc., often have some effect on tagging principles. These problematic phenomena are discussed and illustrated. The development of the tagset is based on the morphosyntactic properties of Xhosa for reasons that are outlined in the article. Manual tagging of a large corpus would be quite a daunting and time-consuming task, not to mention the potential for various kinds of errors. This problem is solved in a two-step process. Firstly, a computer-based drag-and-drop tagger was developed to facilitate the manual tagging of a so-called training corpus. This training corpus then forms the input to the development of an automatic tagger. The principles and procedures for the development of an automatic tagger for African languages are also discussed. ©2003 NISC Pty Ltd.

In this paper we give an outline of a corpus planning project which aims to develop linguistic resources for the nine official African languages of South Africa in the form of corpora, more specifically spoken language corpora. In the course of the article, we will address issues such as spoken language vs. written language, register vs. activity and normative vs. non-normative approaches to corpus planning. We then give an outline of the design of a spoken language corpus for the nine official African languages of South Africa. We consider issues such as representativity and sampling (urban-rural, dialects, gender, social class and activities), transcription standards and conventions as well as the problems emanating from widespread loans and code switching and other forms of language mix characteristic of spoken language. Finally, we summarise the status of the project at present and plans for the future. ©2003 NISC Pty Ltd.

Today, intercultural first acquaintance meetings are becoming more and more frequent. The aim of this study is to describe, analyze and compare Swedish, Chinese and Swedish-Chinese first acquaintance interactions. Our focus lies on a classification of the topics in mono- and intercultural first-time encounters. The analysis is based on 12 arranged face-to-face first acquaintance interactions between Chinese-Chinese, Swedish-Swedish and Swedish-Chinese students (4 of each dyad). The interactions are video-recorded and transcribed. In addition, semi-structured interviews with the participants have been conducted to get a better understanding of their communication. The method of activity-based communication analysis is used to analyze the data. The result of the study is a classification and a cross-cultural comparison of topics and the order of their occurrence in first time encounters. In addition, the study sheds light on the similarities and differences between Chinese and Swedish communication patterns. ©2011 Springer-Verlag.

This paper is an exploration in the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic feedback, i. e. linguistic mechanisms which enable the participants in spoken interaction to exchange information about basic communicative functions, such as contact, perception, understanding, and attitudinal reactions to the communicated content. Special attention is given to the type of reaction conveyed by feedback utterances, the communicative status of the information conveyed (i. e. the level of awareness and intentionality of the communicating sender), and the context sensitivity of feedback expressions. With regard to context sensitivty, which is one of the most characteristic features of feedback expressions, the discussion focuses on the way in which the type of speech act (mood), the factual polarity, and the information status of the preceding utterance influence the interpretation of feedback utterances. The different content dimensions are exemplified by data from recorded dialogues and by data given through linguistic intuition. Finally, two different ways of formalizing the analysis are examined, one using attribute-value matrices and one based on the theory of situation semantics. ©1992 N.I.S. Foundation (1992).

Social activities are an important part of the context of language use and provide many keys to understanding linguistic and communicative features. Such features can be well understood only if they are observed in their natural setting which to some extent is possible using a multimodal corpus as linguistic communication itself is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and further issues, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Lohorung.

Language is used for communication and communication facilitates social activities. If we want to capture this, linguistic investigation has to be carried out within a wider context. Examination of linguistic communication in a wider context shows that it is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and preliminary findings, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Nepali. ©2012 IEEE.

The aim of this study has been to see the conventionalisation and use of the Swedish word jätte (giant) in newspapers and texts written by pupils in the Upper Secondary School, primarily when used as an intensifier in compound words. The question forming the basis of the study is: “How, by whom and to what extent is jätte used in newspapers and texts written by pupils?”To answer the question two corpora have been analysed. The results show that jätte is quite common compared to other Swedish intensifiers as “tok” and “super”. Usually it is used together with adjectives. When used in newspapers it is most commonly used in direct speech, but it is also used in more formal parts of the paper as the editorial. In the texts written by the pupils it is mostly used in sections with narrative elements.The people who use jätte in newspapers can be divided into two groups, journalists and interviewees. The word is widely spread among people and it is used by both women and men of different ages and with different socio-economical backgrounds. Among the pupils it is mostly used by girls. The word is used in different subject areas, although it is more common in sports and entertainment. The wide range of subjects and users indicate that the word is accepted to use in the written language, although it is more common in informal contexts.

This study reports on some of the multifaceted challenges faced by both teachers and pupils in teaching and learning English in multicultural and multilingual classrooms, with an emphasis on the impact of pupils' proficiency in their second language (L2) on their ability to acquire a third language (L3). The study seeks to contribute to the research field, specifically concentrating on upper secondary schools in Sweden.

The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews. The participants were six teachers at upper secondary school and six pupils that attend upper secondary school in different parts of Sweden. The sociocultural theory by Vygotsky provided the theoretical framework for analyzing the data. This study includes both teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions, which contributes to broadening the field of research, since conducted research has previously for the most part focused on teachers’ perceptions. Therefore, the results of study differ in some matters from the results of previous research. The results show that there are many challenges experienced by both the teachers and the pupils that participated in the study when teaching and learning English in the multicultural and multilingual classroom. The participants particularly mentioned cultural clashes as a challenge. All of the teachers mentioned that they experience communication difficulties when teaching English in their EFL-classrooms and described this as a challenge. This was also mentioned as a challenge by the interviewed pupils. This study shows that the challenges of teaching and learning English in an EFL-classroom are many, and that this field requires further investigation. 

The study presented here, theoretically framed at the crossroads of sociocultural and decolonial perspectives, draws attention to the sudden proliferation of two specific neologisms in the area of language, education and identity across time and space. It particularly highlights concerns regarding the ways in which these are deployed within scholarship and in schools and teacher education currently in the nation-state of Sweden. The analysis presented in this paper throws critical light on the ways in which the emergence and proliferation of neologisms like translanguaging and nyanlända (newly-arrived) contribute towards (or confounds) issues related to communication and diversity in the educational sector. This is done by juxtaposing the trajectory and deployment of neologisms in relation to social practices across institutional spaces. Such an enterprise is important, given recent calls for flexibility against the backdrop of concerns regarding heterogeneous populations in schools in geopolitical spaces like Sweden. Here expectations regarding both inclusion and learning goals for all students are prioritised agendas. We draw upon data from ethnographical projects at the CCD research group (www.ju.se/ccd) to make our case. This includes naturally occurring interactional data and textual data, for instance, current scholarship, directives from the national bodies in charge of schools and teacher education in Sweden.

This chapter builds upon data from different multi-sited ethnographic projects that have been conducted and are ongoing in different geopolitical and digital spaces. This chapter is framed within sociocultural, dialogical and decolonial perspectives which highlight that learning is a situated and distributed process where communication is collaboratively achieved. In these traditions, while the rich potentials and dimensions of human communication in concert with intellectual and material tools are recognized, attention in analysis has tended to be dominated over the decades by an “oral language bias”. The findings presented in this chapter raise epistemological and pragmatic challenges related to the very doing of ethnographic fieldwork and illustrate some closely related theoretical and methodological issues, specifically in settings where linguistic heterogeneity is the norm.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka förskollärarnas syn på flerspråkiga barns språkutveckling i yngre åldrar i förskolan. I studien har vi utgått från följande frågeställningar: Vilken syn förskollärare har om strategier som används vid flerspråkiga barns språkutveckling? Hur använder förskollärare miljön för att utveckla flerspråkiga barns språk?

I studien har kvalitativa intervjuer gjorts med sex förskollärare i en medelstor kommun. Anledningen att vi valde använda oss av kvalitativa intervjuer var att uppnå vårt syfte och få svar på våra frågeställningar. Denna metod lämpar sig för vår studie då vi vill undersöka förskollärarnas syn på vårt syfte. Vår studie genomsyras av sociokulturellt perspektiv.

Det vi har kommit fram till är att förskollärarna tycker att flerspråkiga barns språkutveckling är lika komplex som de enspråkigas. Den är beroende av olika faktorer såsom förskollärarnas kompetens, miljön, hem och barns begåvning. Förskollärarna tycker inte att de skiljer sig från de andra förskolorna i sitt arbetssätt, bemötande och material som de använder på sina förskolor. Fast de tillämpar sitt arbetssätt och sin miljö till den barngrupp de har. De anser att de flerspråkiga barn som har goda kunskaper i sitt modersmål är lika duktiga på svenska.

Language-learning aptitude and crosslinguistic similarity between learners’ first language (L1) and the target second language (L2) are both known to facilitate successful L2 learning. However, these phenomena have rarely been investigated together in the same study. To address this research gap in second language acquisition, the present study was carried out with 92 international students of Swedish as a L2, with diverse L1 backgrounds. The participants first completed a language aptitude test upon entering a six-week introductory L2 course at the beginning level. Their L1 background was categorized in relation to the target language as either similar (Germanic L1) or distant (non-Germanic L1). At the end of the course, the participants completed a test of L2 achievement. Regression analyses of achievement scores, with language aptitude and L1 background as independent variables, revealed that crosslinguistic similarity explained at least as much variance in L2 achievement as did language aptitude. When comparing the effects of aptitude in the two L1 subsamples, language aptitude was found to be more important for the learners with a typologically similar L1, than for the learners with a more distant L1. In addition, the results provide support to theoretical proposals made in the individual differences literature that indicate that auditory processing ability may be of particular importance in the earliest stages of L2 acquisition.

In studies of second language (L2) learning aptitude, research using the LLAMA aptitude tests (Meara,2005) has grown in recent years to over 40 published studies so far. Although LLAMA was not validated priorto its release, later research (e.g. Grañena & Long, 2013) has contributed validity evidence mainly from samplesof intermediate or advanced L2 learners. Often, however, L2 is narrowly represented by, for example, agrammaticality judgement task, and there is also a lack of consistency in the correlational evidence betweenLLAMA and L2 tasks. Some studies rely on small, outlier sensitive, samples. All together, no clear picture hasemerged regarding the predictive validity of the four subtests of LLAMA, the facets of L2 proficiency they relateto, and covariation with learner level. A continuous investigation of validity evidence is therefore necessary.

Mixed L1 adult learner groups at beginner level is a common situation in many L2 classrooms today. Skehan(1998) suggested that for L2 beginners, auditory processing ability is of particular importance. This has gainedsome LLAMA-derived evidence recently (Artieda & Muñoz, 2016) but otherwise, general proficiency amongL2 beginners is not well represented in existing LLAMA research. The aim of the present study was to explorethe predictive validity of LLAMA in a sample of mixed L1 adult beginners of Swedish as a L2, and possiblybeing able to confirm the role of auditory processing among beginners.

International newly arrived university students (n = 93) with a range of L1 backgrounds, participating in aSwedish (L2) language course for beginners, took part in the study. Half way into their six weeks’ training, thestudents were administered the LLAMA battery, consisting of four subtests: B (vocabulary learning), D (soundrecognition) , E (sound-symbol correspondence) and F (grammatical inferencing). Upon finishing the course,they completed a C-test (cf. Klein-Braley, 1997), measuring general L2 proficiency.

LLAMA scores were correlated with scores from the C-test, reaching significance only for LLAMA D (r = 0.30).However, when controlling for participants’ L1, by grouping them into European (mainly Germanic) and non-European (mainly East-Asian) L1s, the correlation with LLAMA D in the European group was 0.50 whenapplying a robust (less outlier sensitive) regression method (cf. Figure 1). A weaker significant correlation wasobserved for LLAMA E (sound-symbol correspondence). In the non-European group, no correlations reachedsignificance. The differential impact of aptitude observed in the two L1 groups was likely due to speakers ofnon-European, typologically distant, L1s having difficulties in acquiring even basic Swedish skills in a shorttime, resulting in low C-test scores also for high-aptitude learners.

The results confirm previous findings that auditory processing ability (LLAMA D) seems to be a valid predictorof initial L2 learning. They also highlight methodological considerations, such as the effect of applying robuststatistics, as well as using tasks of appropriate difficulty when subsets of participants may be expected to performat different proficiency levels.

The present study makes an important contribution to L2 learning aptitude research by adding knowledge aboutthe predictive validity of LLAMA.

This chapter discusses psychometric considerations in the study of how individual differences in cognitive abilities, such as language aptitude or working memory, influence second language acquisition. Psychometrics, or test theory, describes procedures for developing tests and evaluating their suitability for an intended assessment purpose. Significant issues in test construction include item analysis, test scoring, reliability, and validity; these topics make up the main part of the chapter and they are discussed in the contexts of both classical test theory and item response theory. Importantly, it is pointed out that lack of attention to psychometric concerns may negatively impact knowledge production in the field of second language acquisition. The final parts of the chapter provide examples of how test theoretical problems have been treated in previous research on individual differences in second language acquisition, and suggestions are made for enhancing psychometric awareness in the research community.

Ett flervalstest av receptivt ordförråd, baserat på information om ordfrekvens, konstruerades och provades ut i en pilotstudie. Orden samplades ur en svensk korpusderiverad basordlista från frekvensnivåerna 2000, 3000, 5000 och 8000 (definierade som frekvensband med 1000 ord vardera). Studiens deltagare utgjordes av 290 personer med svenska som främmande- eller andraspråk. De flesta item fungerade väl och reliabiliteten var god förutom i 2K-nivån, där en tydlig takeffekt gav låg varians i mätdata. I linje med vad tidigare forskning har visat, följde testresultaten ett implikationellt mönster med distinkt progression i svårighet från lägre till högre nivå och detta förhållande kunde iakttas både på grupp- och individnivå. Deltagarnas färdighetsnivå (GERS), enligt lärarbedömning eller kursplacering, visade signifikant korrelation med poängresultat på ordtestet, dock något lägre än väntat. Slutligen föreslås en modell för hur testpoäng kan användas för kvantifiering av receptivt ordförråd.

Language learning aptitude is a hypothesized psychological construct that has been used to explain differences in how fast and how well people can acquire a second language (L2). It is generally assumed that language learning aptitude is a multidimensional phenomenon, meaning that it consists of sub-constructs that are not necessarily interrelated. Research on language aptitude and its relationship with language learning outcomes has been undertaken for at least 70 years but much still remains unknown about the nature of this construct. Key to understanding the effects of a hypothesized latent trait like language aptitude is to ensure that it can be meaningfully quantified, and also that whatever real world observations that the trait is supposed to be linked to (in this case, L2 acquisition) can be measured with sufficient accuracy. The present thesis set out to explore issues in the measurement of both language learning aptitude and its predicted outcome (L2 acquisition), specifically applied to a context in which the L2 is Swedish. The validity of an increasingly popular test of language aptitude, the LLAMA, was examined in detail and a test of Swedish receptive vocabulary for L2 learners (the SweLT) was developed with the aim of efficiently serving various research purposes, including the study of language aptitude effects. In addition, theoretical and methodological issues in the assessment of individual differences in second language acquisition were outlined. The results from the empirical studies suggest that the LLAMA suffers from imprecision but that it may still be useful in research if due care is given to the interpretation of the obtained test scores. For quick assessment of general proficiency in Swedish, the SweLT seems to be a promising candidate but further refinement of this test is called for. Finally, some possible implications of aptitude research are discussed, including future use of aptitude tests as practical tools for individual adaptation of educational programs for adult L2 learners of Swedish. The findings of this thesis make it clear that the LLAMA would not be suitable for this purpose. 

Language learning aptitude is assumed to explain a relatively large amount of the variance in the acquisition rate and ultimate L2 level reached by adult second language learners. In SLA, the quality of studies on language aptitude crucially depends on the availability of valid research instruments. The most popular language aptitude test during the past decade has been the LLAMA test suite (Meara, 2005), which has figured in over 50 published studies from which conclusions have been made about phenomena related to language aptitude. A recent paper (Bokander & Bylund, 2020) found several problematic issues pertaining to the internal validity of the LLAMA, such as low reliability of test scores, but the authors did not address external validity, that is, the ability of an aptitude test to predict learning outcomes. No large-scale external validation study of the LLAMA has hitherto been undertaken, but an alternative way of evaluating the external validity of an aptitude test is to systematically examine its correlations with learning outcomes. This presentation reports from a systematic review of previously published correlations between LLAMA and various L2 tasks (e.g., grammaticality judgements, pronunciation, or general L2 proficiency). The aim is to gauge the overall effectiveness of the LLAMA in producing significant correlations with L2 outcomes. 

Empirical original studies were obtained via popular scientific databases and were included in the review if they used the full LLAMA suite or a subset thereof, and if they reported correlation coefficients with L2 outcomes. L2 tasks were coded according to the linguistic features that were in focus into four categories: general L2 ability; grammar; vocabulary; and phonology/pronunciation. The correlation coefficients were dichotomously coded as statistically significant or non-significant, depending on how they had been reported in the original studies. In total, 36 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. From them, 460 correlations were obtained based on scores from 2286 participants. 

The systematic review reveals that only about 20% of the correlations between LLAMA tasks and L2 learning outcomes were reported as statistically significant, potentially allowing them to be interpreted as non-random and attributed with psychological meaning. However, the highest correlations were consistently found in small samples, in which sampling error may be large. Several studies, often those with larger sample sizes, reported near zero correlations with outcomes, and this in cases where positive associations between aptitude and L2 outcomes would be theoretically expected. The analysis thus suggests that some findings based on correlations with LLAMA scores may be unduly influenced by measurement error. A recommendation for future research is using the full LLAMA suite in large-sample correlational designs with a variety of L2 outcomes, in order to evaluate the external validity of the LLAMA. In conclusion, there is a need for caution when researchers base their findings on correlations with LLAMA because too little is yet known about its external validity. 

ReferencesBokander, L., & Bylund, E. (2020). Probing the internal validity of the LLAMA language aptitude tests. Language Learning, 70(1), 11–47.

Meara, P. (2005). The LLAMA language aptitude tests. Lognostics.

Ordförråd är en central komponent i andraspråksinlärares kommunikativa språkfärdighet. Forskning har visat att ordförrådsutveckling påverkas av inlärares användning av ordinlärnings-strategier och att sådana strategier kan läras ut. Därför är det rimligt att anta att andraspråks-inlärares skolbakgrund inverkar på deras strategianvändning och ordförrådsutveckling. Denna pilotstudie fokuserade på strategianvändning och ordkunskap hos 42 sfi-elever med varierande skolbakgrund. Alla läste kurs D och var alltså på ungefär samma språkliga nivå. Med modifierade versioner av Bokanders (2016) ordkunskapstest och LaBontees (2017) strategi-användningstest utforskade vi samband mellan deltagarnas skolbakgrund, strategianvändning och ordkunskap. Resultaten visade att sociala strategier, som att använda nya ord i kommunikativa situationer, korrelerade positivt med ordkunskap. Skolbakgrund tycktes inte påverka elevernas benägenhet att använda sådana strategier. Strategier för att befästa redan bekanta ord föredrogs i högre utsträckning av elever med kortare skolbakgrund. Denna preferens korrelerade negativt med ordkunskap. Strategier för att utvidga ordförrådet, exempelvis genom att utifrån kontexten gissa vad okända ord betyder, föredrogs av elever med längre skolbakgrund. Denna preferens korrelerade positivt med ordkunskap. Dessutom var elever med längre skolbakgrund mer benägna att planera sin ordinlärning. En viktig implikation av studien är att sfi-elever med kortare skolbakgrund behöver stöttas i att använda strategier som syftar till att utvidga ordförrådet och inte bara till att befästa redan kända ord. Dessa elever behöver även stöttas för att planera en långsiktigt hållbar ordförrådsutveckling.

Over the past decade, the LLAMA language aptitude test battery has come to play an increasingly important role as an instrument in research on individual differences in language development. However, a potentially serious problem that has been pointed out by several scholars is that the LLAMA has not yet been carefully validated. We addressed this issue by examining the internal validity of this test battery. We collected LLAMA data from 350 participants and assessed these data using classical item analysis, Rasch analysis, and principal component analysis within a framework of best practices in educational and psychological test validation. The results show that only one out of the four subtests (LLAMA B) produced scores that fit a latent trait model with sufficient accuracy. This suggests that researchers using the LLAMA battery must treat their results with appropriate carefulness and also that there is potential for refining the LLAMA further.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka förskollärares uppfattningar om flerspråkiga barn och ele-vers språkutveckling i förskolan och i förskoleklass. I studien har vi utgått från två frågeställ-ningar som är följande; vilka strategier använder förskollärare för att utveckla språkutveckling hos flerspråkiga barn och elever? Vilken betydelse har miljön för flerspråkiga barn och elever och deras språkutveckling i förskola respektive förskoleklass?

Kvalitativa intervjuer har använts, vilket innebär att åtta förskollärare intervjuats för att besvara frågeställningarna i studien. Ett sociokulturellt perspektiv genomsyrar studien. Resultatet visade på att de olika förskolorna och förskoleklasserna arbetade på olika sätt med flerspråkighet. En del arbetade medvetet med flerspråkighet medan andra arbetade mindre medvetet. Responden-terna ansåg att det finns många faktorer som påverkar både förskollärarnas förmåga att arbeta medvetet med flerspråkighet och även de flerspråkiga barnens språkutveckling. Resultatet visar att de olika faktorerna som påverkar förskollärares förmåga till medvetet arbete är kopplade till vilka resurser som finns, hur miljön ser ut och vilket förhållningssätt förskolläraren har mot barnen.

Interlocutors, express not only information in the form of spoken words but also their feelings and commitments with regard to what is being said. In face-to-face communication participants interact in such a way that they react to one another’s multimodal positioning in the conversation. Often this means that they take a ’stance’. The goal of this paper is to explore the notion of stance through a review and discussion of some of the relevant literature and then relate this to research on social signal processing (SSP). The main focus of the review is on the notion of stance in linguistics, as the point of departure for exploring other fields. Consideration of the relation between gestural communication and expression of emotions will give a more complete view of how a stance is taken and upheld. ©2012 IEEE.

Several minority languages are on the verge of extinction in Nepal, especially when they don’t have a generally accepted writing system and occur in an area where Nepali (the official language) is predominantly used. Lohorung is an example, which is spoken among the Lohroung Rai communities of Sankhuwasabha, a hilly district of eastern Nepal. Older generations of Lohorung are experts in Lohorung but they have limitations in reading and writing English or Nepali. The documentation of Lohorung and other similar endangered languages is important. If the right tools and techniques are used, we believe that self documentation is one of the best ways, to document a language. We have developed an online platform which community members can use to collaboratively self document their language. The platform is a multimodal dictionary authoring and browsing tool and it has been developed with a focus on usability, ease of use and productivity. ©2012 IEEE.

Dagens samhälle är i en utvecklingsprocess där digitala verktyg får allt större plats. Vi använder oss av teknik mer nu än vad vi någon gång har gjort. Detta är något som påverkar skolan, då skolan ska utbilda elever så de klarar sig i samhället. Skolan har som mål att spegla samhället. Därmed har det tillkommit att elever ska få möjligheten att utveckla digital kompetens och lärare ska använda sig av digitala verktyg i undervisningen. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur lärare i årskurs 4-6 beskriver att de arbetar med och hanterar digitala verktyg kopplat till ämnet svenska med inriktning på läsförståelse och skrivinlärning. För att uppnå studiens syfte har det genomförts kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer där fem stycken lärare deltagit. Det centrala i studien är lärarnas resonemang samt likheter och skillnader i deras svar gentemot forskningsfrågorna. Resultatet av studien visar att digitala verktyg upplevs som ett hjälpmedel men att det finns orosmoment och utmaningar vid användningen av digitala verktyg i undervisningen.

Today’s society is in development, where digital tools have gained more attention and are used more frequently. This change will affect the educational system. The educational system is intended to reflect society; thus, students should learn to develop their digital competence. Consequently, teachers should use digital tools in their education. The aim of this study is to explore how teachers for grades 4 to 6 in Swedish compulsory school works with and handles digital tools in their education, focusing on the subject Swedish with an emphasis on reading comprehension and writing acquisition. This paper used a qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews conducted with five teachers. The central part of this paper is the teacher’s reasoning along with similarities and differences in their responses in relation to the research question. The results show that digital tools are indeed seen as helpful, however, there are several concerns and challenges in the use of digital tools for educational purposes.

Nativelike expression in L2 speech is investigated by comparing quantity and distribution of different types of multiword structures (MWSs) in the speech of very advanced L2 speakers with native speakers. Swedish speakers of L2 English, L2 French and L2 Spanish (average LOR in the UK, France and Chile 7–10 years) performing two oral tasks, a role play, and an online retelling task, are compared with matching native speakers, totalling 140,000 words. The L2 groups were nativelike in their use of MWSs as social routines in the role play. Collocations, the dominant category in the retelling task, were underrepresented in all three L2 groups compared to the native groups. Furthermore, the English NNSs were nativelike on more measurements of MWSs than the French and Spanish NNSs.

Elicited conversations with participants engaged in a problematic negotiation with their boss were analyzed in groups of native speakers of British English, Chilean Spanish and Swedish, and in groups of Swedish speakers of L2 English and L2 Spanish (longtime residents in their host community and highly proficient in their L2). Two planes of comparison were involved: cross-culturally, addressing differences between the native groups, and, inter-culturally, addressing interaction between natives and non-natives. Results show considerable distance between the three L1 groups, especially regarding how power distance and social distance are managed both by the ‘employees’ and the ‘bosses’. As regards L2 speaker behavior, alignment with target community patterns largely prevails and few instances of L1 transfer occur. Communicative clashes are found to take place more often in the Swedish-Spanish encounters than in the Swedish-English ones, arguably due to the wider cultural distance between the Chilean and Swedish socio-cultures.

The purpose of this essay is to describe the term occupation, the basic and most important concept in occupational therapy (OT), and to urge the translation of OT concepts in Filipino. OT is a branch of rehabilitation that deals with the improvement or maintenance of a person's skills to perform daily activities. The profession started in the Philippines more than 40 years ago, and the medium of its instruction is English. Until now, there is no official register of OT terminology in Filipino, which may have resulted in a mixing of the two languages when communicating with clients. This may have led to the misunderstanding of the client on the role of OT in improving quality of life, and to the difficulty of the therapist to encourage clients to take active part in their own therapy. To facilitate service delivery, the therapist should be able to communicate in a language which is used and understood by the Filipino client. A register of OT terms in Filipino and its dissemination among therapists in practice and academe is the proposed solution.

Standard language cultures are characterised by beliefs in idealised standard forms of the language in question. In this paper, these beliefs are connected to the concepts of referee design and speech community, through analysis of how Swedish adolescents reflect upon and self-assess their language proficiencies. The data consist of interviews where 111 participants self-assess their Swedish, English and additional home languages. During the self-assessment, participants use different points of reference when reflecting on the different languages in their repertoires. Four main categories of answers are found, all relating to an absent referee in some manner: the participants’ evaluations of other people’s language proficiency compared to their own; their proficiency in other languages; their evaluation of their proficiency in relation to formal grading and feedback given in school; and their own experiences of their limitations and abilities in different situations. When assessing Swedish, participants display attitudes towards ‘good’ and ‘bad’ language and contextualise their proficiency in a way that focuses on standard language ideologies and their speech community. The same pattern does not occur when participants reflect on their other languages, indicating the important role that the peer group and speech community have in creating and facilitating these ideologies.

This article analyses a delimited corpus of Internet memes showcasing former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The theoretical framework is based on studies of memes and Internet memes as phenomena inserted in the online dimension of transmission and cultural production, and principles of the General Theory of Systems. The methodological approach is based on the classification tools developed by Dawkins (1976) to describe memes that spread widely across the digital space (fidelity, fecundity and longevity) and the patterns developed by Knobel and Lankshear (2007) as the main characteristics that contribute to an Internet meme’s spreadability (humour, intertextuality and juxtaposition). These classification tools are applied aiming to select and analyse Internet memes that feature the Brazilian president. The goal of the article is to extract from both classification systems relevant tools for guiding understanding about how certain specific sets of memes connected to Dilma Rousseff became memorable and spreadable within the Brazilian media landscape. The result findings show that the categories and patterns applied to the analysis are not isolated and are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are frequently juxtaposed, which denotes their integrated nature and coherent disposition, corroborating to clarify and identify how certain specific sets of memes spread within the media.

In Iquitos, Peru, a city of about 500,000 in the Peruvian Amazon, there is a disparity in the sign language skills of deaf individuals based on age. Large numbers of deaf adults use Peruvian Sign Language (LSP) as their primary means of communication and interact with one another at deaf association and church gatherings. In contrast, the majority of deaf youth younger than eighteen years old grow up primarily in hearing environments, without access to spoken Spanish or LSP. In order to communicate with the hearing individuals around them, many develop rudimentary manual communication systems, called homesigns. The disparity in language skills between deaf youth and deaf adults has not always been so prominent. In the past, deaf students in Iquitos gained access to LSP by attending one of four special education schools, where they could routinely interact with deaf peers and, sometimes, deaf adults. In recent years, however, deaf youth have been placed in regular education “inclusive” classrooms, where they are typically the only deaf person in the school and receive no support services to access the language of the classroom. This change in policy has had the unintended effect of cutting off the previous pathways by which deaf youth in Iquitos gained access to LSP in the classroom. Thus, the adoption of “inclusive” education as the new special education policy has resulted in large numbers of deaf youth relying on homesigns as their primary form of communication. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork with deaf individuals in Iquitos that has been ongoing since 2010.