Universitetet i Agder: UiA Journal System
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Action research into the use of popular music: A goldmine worth exploring in the ELT secondary-school classroom?
No full textAbstract Conducting action research is an excellent way for teachers and teacher trainers to pursue their professional development inside the classroom and for language learners to take part in small-scale research projects. This article presents a study where action research was used in the teaching and learning of English in a Norwegian upper-secondary school. A class of thirty, first-year Vg1 pupils took part in a project to investigate either lexico-grammatical or multimodal features in a selection of popular music while working towards achieving some of the competence aims in the English subject curriculum. The project involved dividing the learners into two groups each of which followed a different approach to investigating the lyrics and, in the case of one group, also the videos. The same written assignment was given to both groups to see if similar or diverging results emerged that might be related to the different approaches used. The learners were also given a pre-project and a post-project questionnaire to probe their thoughts and reactions to the learning process. Both approaches made use of music performances on YouTube; these represent a rich, multimodal language resource appreciated by adolescents but tending to be underexploited by English language teachers. Besides presenting the actual study, this article is intended as a step-by-step guide for teachers who would like to implement similar action in their own classrooms
Literacy i språkfagene: kunnskaper, ferdigheter og vurdering
No full textThis article discusses reading and writing in a foreign language (English, French, Spanish, German etc.) Foreign language learning carries an additional challenge compared to other school subjects. The foreign language is both the subject the students are learning and the language they are learning in. Therefore, the students must reach a certain language level before they can communicate in the foreign language. Likewise, their literacy skills in their mother language can only be transferred to their foreign language when they have reached a certain communicative level in the foreign language. Some students struggle to reach this level, referred to as the threshold level (B1), during the two to five years of tuition. Students also need help from the teacher in order to develop literacy strategies in the foreign language. In order to scaffold the students’ literacy development, the teachers need knowledge about the reading and writing processes. How can teachers develop an instructional design that promotes literacy in their classroom? How can they give feedback that moves the students forward? How can this be done in a digital context? This article tries to answer these questions
Noter til musikken: Premisser og konstruksjoner
No full textWhat is music and how do we go about researching it? Obviously, these are important questions, and the backbone of further developments within the discipline of musicology. As far as empirical fields and contextualization goes, this text initially claims that studies within ethnomusicology and musicology today portray a blurring of borders. The making of text as such and the analysis of a musical phenomenon, be it more or less focused on contexts primarily understood as external to the sound itself or the actual production of it, cannot escape the sediments of academic traditions and a multitude of challenges translating "music" to Music. What music is will always permeate academic texts on the matter whether it is an explicit theme or not. Without offering a final solution, nor excluding any takes on the matter, this article offers some critical comments funded primarily on a text by Michael Tanner (Understanding Music) that more or less explicitly treats this question
Baustein West und Bauplan Ost. Zur politischen: Transformation jugendkultureller Stile in der DDR
No full textWithin different political systems, youth cultures use similar symbols and styles which are charged with distinct and specific meaning. In the German Democratic Republic, the socialist part of Germany, youth cultures were identified as being a political threat. They created space for communication that was in sharp contrast to the propagandistic ideal of the so-called „socialist personality“ and hardly to control by the state. Based on the example of the hippie phenomenon in the East, the essay explains the way global youth cultures had been differentiated culturally and loaded with political sense under the circumstances of socialis
Fremmedspråkundervisningen i Norge. Nye veger, nye dører, nye muligheter
No full textNorwegian pupils only achieve a low level of proficiency in third languages such as French, German, and Spanish. with that startingpoint the article wants to explore new ways of introducing these languages in school. The project considers different models of organizing third language education in European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and evaluates the possibilities for adapting similar models in schools in Norway
Forbedring av skriveferdigheter og økt selvtillit gjennom grammatikkundervisning
No full textDenne artikkelen oppsummerer et forskningsprosjekt på skriveferdigheter gjennomført i videregående skole våren 2010. Hovedmålet med dette forskningsprosjektet var å undersøke om grammatikkundervisning i norsk og engelsk kan forbedre elevers skriveferdigheter, og om dette igjen vil gi elevene økt selvtillit når det gjelder skriving. I forskningsprosjektet ble det brukt to testgrupper og to kontrollgrupper, og testgruppene ble utsatt for et undervisningseksperiment, hvor fokus var på ulike typer sammenbindinger. Resultatene fra prosjektet viser enkelte interessante funn, mellom annet en økt variasjon i forhold til bruk av sammenbindingselementer som uttrykker motsetningsforhold etter endt undervisningseksperiment. Et annet interessant funn var at denne effekten kunne en se både når elevene skrev på norsk, som er deres morsmål, og engelsk. Det er lite dokumentert forskning innen dette feltet i Norge, og erfaringene fra dette forskningsprosjektet vil kunne bidra til refleksjon rundt videre forskning på sammenhenger mellom skriveferdigheter og grammatikkundervisning
The Prima Vista Line by Line Research Method
No full textIn this article I argue for the justification of an experimental research method in poetry response in English as a foreign language. I claim that to exploit the resources of student readers in a better way, a method is needed to elicit uncensored primary responses that are often lost in the classroom. Unless student readers are allowed to encounter a poem personally and sincerely, and read it line by line, the primary reactions will be lost and language learning through poetry will be hampered. The primary reactions include the readers’ experiences in terms of knowledge of language and poetic devices, in addition to emotional and psychological reactions during the reading of a poem in English. On the basis of reader-oriented theories of literature I challenge traditional approaches to poetry research, which in turn may affect the teaching of poetry in a foreign language