Although it is widely recognised by language teachers that the use of musical activities supports language development in both children and adults, studies show that teachers do not use them as much as they would like. This gap can be disadvantageous to both learners and teachers. The purpose of this study was to collect examples of music activities that actually take place and are regarded as beneficial for language development in Spanish in a Swedish school context, and what conditions are central to them being used. The study is based on a survey and follow-up interviews with Spanish teachers, and the results show that a wide variety of activities are used, both with a focus on communicative and cultural competences, and on providing stimulating settings for learning. This high level of use suggests a smaller gap between teachers' beliefs and practices compared to previous studies, possibly indicating that music has a more prominent place in the Spanish classroom than in other foreign language classrooms. The choice of music for the learning activity emerged as a particularly important factor for the activity to work as intended.

Olika typer av musikaktiviteter kan gynna språkutvecklingen för såväl barn som vuxna, men flera studier visar att lärare inte använder dem i den utsträckning de skulle vilja. Detta glapp kan vara till nackdel för både inlärare och lärare. Syftet med denna studie var att samla exempel på musikaktiviteter som faktiskt blir av och bedöms fungera positivt för språkutveckling i spanska i svensk skolkontext, och vilka förutsättningar som är centrala för att detta ska ske. Studien baserar sig på enkätsvar och uppföljande intervjuer med spanskalärare, och resultaten visar att en stor variation av aktiviteter används både med fokus på kommunikativa och kulturella kompetenser, och för att främja förutsättningarna för lärande. Denna höga användning tyder på ett mindre glapp mellan övertygelse och praktik inom just spanskämnet, vilket kan tyda på att musik har en mer given plats i spanskaklassrummet än i andra språkämnen. Musikval framstår som en särskilt viktig faktor för att aktiviteten ska fungera med avsedd effekt.

This qualitative study aims to describe some interactional uses of öh [ø], a commonly used particle both in Italian and in other Italian-Romance varieties, from the perspective of conversation analysis (Schegloff, 2007). The research is based on a corpus of 59 instances from informal phone calls between friends, face-to-face conversations, and interviews in standard and regional Italian. The analysis shows that öh appears in responsive turns both as a free-standing turn-constructional unit and as a turn preface, either alone or in combination with other words. In the sequential context analyzed here - the response to a polar question, a B-event statement (i.e., a statement that indicate privileged, first-hand knowledge to a topic by the interlocutor, and which is usually treated as request for confirmation; cf. Labov and Fanshel, 1977: 100) or other types of informational turns - öh is used by participants to confirm from an epistemically qualified position. Finally, öh can take on distinct prosodic contours, lending itself to remarkable modulations that can emphasize the participant’s stance (cf. Gardner 2001).

In this paper, the findings from a qualitative analysis of student and teacher interviews following an online Japanese-Swedish tandem exchange in 2020 will be discussed. The main aim was to explore what students and teachers had valued in the exchange, and to connect these values to the theoretical principles of reciprocity and autonomy in the tandem learning model (Little & Brammerts 1996). The results show that students valued reciprocal aspects, focusing on personal peer-to-peer experiences and the opportunity for natural language use, while teachers valued linguistic development, and seemed to implicitly assume a high degree of autonomy to be in place from the start, rather than it being developed or expanded underway. The findings are viewed in the light of the students’ rather different cultural-educational frames and add to building a more global perspective on tandem exchange, which has hitherto been dominated by data from European and American contexts (Lewis & O’Dowd 2016).

Medel från Rektors 5:e utlysning för kvalitetsutveckling för utbildning har använts för att genomföra en genomlysning av Stockholms universitets (SU) lärarprogram med avseende på didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Didaktik belyser undervisningens genomförande medan hållbar utveckling innebär att nuvarande och kommande generationer försäkras en hållbar ekologisk, ekonomisk och social utveckling.

Representanter från de institutioner som ansvarar för Stockholms universitets lärarprogram har samlats regelbundet under 2019-2020. Medverkande institutioner är Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik (IPD), Institutionen för de humanistiska och samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik (HSD), Institutionen för matematikämnets och naturvetenskapsämnenas didaktik (MND), Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen (BUV) och Institutionen för språkdidaktik (ISD).

Behovet av denna genomlysning grundas i högskolelagen (1992:1434) som ålägger alla lärosäten att verka för hållbar utveckling och att högskoleförordningen tydliggör att ett examensmål för lärarexamen, oavsett lärarprogram och inriktning, är undervisning för hållbar utveckling.

Syftet med genomlysningen är att ge underlag för att utveckla kvalitén med avseende på didaktiska perspektiv på hållbar utveckling i de lärarprogram som ges på SU. Underlaget består av att i kursplaner och litteraturlistor identifiera var och i vilken utsträckning hållbar utveckling behandlas i lärarprogrammen samt identifiera möjligheter för att inkludera hållbar utveckling inom respektive lärarprogram

I föreliggande rapport presenteras resultaten från genomlysningen av respektive lärarprogram. Totalt genomlystes 289 kursplaner från 10 lärarprogram. I kursplanerna studerades kursens innehållsbeskrivning, förväntade studieresultat och kurslitteratur. Kopplingen till didaktik och hållbar utveckling uttrycks i tre nivåer: ingen, viss eller direkt koppling. Sett över samtliga innehållsbeskrivningar är fördelningen att 3% av kurserna hade direkt koppling, 12% viss koppling och 85% ingen koppling till didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Mönstret var likartat för Förväntade studieresultat och Kurslitteratur (se Tabell 1). Resultatet visar att det finns ett stort behov av att skapa gemensamma förutsättningar för en utvecklingsprocess mot en didaktik för hållbar utveckling för samtliga lärarprogram på Stockholms universitet.

I rapporten pekas på programrådens roll som central för att påskynda implementeringen av hållbar utveckling på lärarprogrammen på Stockholms universitet. Programråden har möjlighet att samordna både kurser och lärarutbildare inom och mellan lärarprogram för att säkerställa att alla lärarstudenter examineras med avseende på didaktik och hållbar utveckling.

Följaktligen befinner sig Lärarprogrammen på Stockholms universitet inför en rad didaktiska och organisatoriska utmaningar för att uppfylla delmålet i lärarexamensordningen rörande didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Hållbar utveckling är interdisciplinärt och skapar därför behov av samarbete och samordning mellan institutioner. I denna samordning spelar programråden för respektive lärarprogram en central roll.

While phonetic features of infant-directed speech (IDS) have been described cross-linguistically, especially in mothers, the reasons and conditions under which they are found are less clear. In this study, phonetic cues of IDS are investigated in 21 Swedish mothers and fathers including mean fundamental frequency (f0), variation in f0, formant values and vowel space size. The speech material contains read and semi-spontaneous speech. Also, the involvement in child care is considered as a potential interacting factor.

Results show that differences between mothers and fathers in IDS are small and that differences in the involvement in child care are not reflected in the extent of the IDS features used. F0 differences are found in IDS in both semi-spontaneous speech and (although to a smaller extent) in read speech. In contrast, vowel space enhancement is only found in semi-spontaneous speech and differences between the genders appear regarding individual formants of certain vowels.

Speech sounds are commonly divided into two main categories in human languages: vowels, such as ‘e’, ‘a’, ‘o’, and consonants, such as ‘k’, ‘n’, ‘s’. This division is made on the basis of both phonetic and phonological principles, which is useful from a general linguistic point of view but problematic for detailed description and analysis. The main differences between vowels and consonants are that (1) vowels are sounds produced with an open airway between the larynx and the lips, at least along the midline, whereas consonants are produced with a stricture or closure somewhere along it; and (2) that vowels tend to be syllabic in languages, meaning that they embody a sonorous peak in a syllable, whereas only some kinds of consonants tend to be syllabic. There are two main physical components needed to produce a vowel: a sound source, typically a tone produced by vocal fold vibration at the larynx, and a resonator, typically the upper airways. When the tone resonates in the upper airways, it gets a specific quality of sound, perceived and interpreted as a vowel quality, for example, ‘e’ or ‘a’. Which vowel quality is produced is determined by the shape of the inner space of the throat and mouth, the vocal tract shape, created by the speaker’s configuration of the articulators, which include the lips, tongue, jaw, hard and soft palate, pharynx, and larynx. Which vowel is perceived is determined by the auditory and visual input as well as by the listener’s expectations and language experience. Diachronic and synchronic studies on vowel typology show main trends in the vowel inventories in the worlds’ languages, which can be associated with human phonetic aptitude.

Gender specific variation in phonetic parameters exist cross-linguistically. However, differences between languages in the size of this variation point to a socio-cultural aspect influencing these gender-specific differences.

This study investigates fundamental frequency and vowel space size in 71 Swedish and German males and females, thereby comparing gender differences between the language groups. In addition, self-reported gender identity scores are gathered and set in relation to the phonetic variation.

Results reveal differences between the language groups in the size of gender-specific variation with German speakers showing larger differences in mean f0 and vowel space size between the genders than Swedish speakers. This is mainly due to a lower mean f0 and a smaller vowel space in Swedish females and reflects socio-cultural differences in gender identity.

This paper presents some results and a small follow-up investigation from an MRI study of vowels [3], in which classical distance-to-area equations [5] were evaluated for implementation in sagittal view articulatory modelling. It was shown that an articulatorily more detailed application of the conversion rules improved the accuracy of the predicted areas, but that this increased realism failed to improve acoustic performance, if midline derivation and vocal tract termination points were kept the same. These results are discussed in relation to articulatory modelling in linguistic research. Work funded by the NIH (R01DC02014) and Stockholm University (SU617023001).

In questo contributo si propone un’analisi fonetica e conversazionale dell’espressione hai capito? (d’ora in avanti HC) in un corpus di parlato dialettale raccolto a Pozzuoli (NA). Questa espressione viene utilizzata frequentemente come appendice di fine enunciato (in inglese ending tag) e presenta realizzazioni molto variabili, raggiungendo spesso gradi molto avanzati di riduzione, sino a comparire talvolta in una forma minimale [trascrizione fonetica: ɛ]. Parallelamente alla riduzione fonetica, HC sembra essere soggetta a un processo di delessicalizzazione, venendo ad assumere funzioni pragmatiche peculiari. Si ipotizza che la variazione di pronuncia sia connessa (1) con funzioni diverse di questa espressione nella conversazione, per esempio se conclude un tema, o se è usata per tenere o lasciare il turno, e (2) con posizioni diverse nella catena sintagmatica, per esempio se è inclusa tra pause o se occorre nel mezzo della catena parlata. Obiettivo di questo lavoro è dunque descrivere la forma e la funzione del tag e discutere le condizioni di un’eventuale relazione tra questi due aspetti. Nei paragrafi 1.1-1.2 vengono introdotte alcune linee di ricerca, relative all’analisi della conversazione e ai modelli della riduzione fonetica, che costituiscono lo sfondo teorico sul quale si colloca il presente lavoro; in § 2 si introduce il fenomeno analizzato e si descrive la metodologia utilizzata; in § 3 si presentano i dati; in § 4 si discutono i risultati e si propone un’ipotesi di classificazione tipologica di HC.