@article {341, title = {STUDENTS LEARNING ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE: AN AP-PLIED LINGUISTICS LEARNING STUDY}, journal = {Problems of Education in the 21st Century }, volume = {18}, year = {2009}, month = {December/2009}, type = {Original article}, chapter = {86-96}, abstract = {This study involved students from a teacher training programme and classroom teachers during in-service training. These students and teachers were introduced to variation theory and carried out a learn-ing study on English as a Second Language (ESL) that incorporated five research lessons taught in paral-lel, rather than in a cycle. The participants in the study were five classes from grade level five to upper secondary school, five university students, and two researchers. The aim was to put learning study to test in describing in what ways students (from fifth graders to upper secondary school students) discerned the letter s at the end of a word, and secondly what kind of knowledge about this learning object they were able to develop during instruction. When an s appears as a terminal letter in English, it can be inter-preted in at least five different ways: contraction, plural, third person singular, genitive or possessive pronoun. It can also be the final letter of a monomorphemic word (bass) or suffix (-ness). Our study dem-onstrated how learning study was used to describe how students of different ages interpret the suffix s. A pattern emerged indicating the way knowledge of a phenomenon develops as a consequence of teaching. This pattern was analysed in terms of the structure of the students{\textquoteright} native language. The outcome showed how students tried to comprehend a second language by means of the structure of the first. A good exam-ple is the pronoun your (dependent possessive form) and yours (independent possessive form). As there is no variation in Swedish between dependent and independent possessives, students associate the two forms with the differences between d- and t- gender. This distinction is made in Swedish (din/ditt) but not in modern English. }, keywords = {learning study, teacher training programme, variation theory}, issn = {1822-7864}, url = {http://oaji.net/articles/2014/457-1399916048.pdf}, author = {Mona Holmqvist and Gunilla Lindgren} } @article {114, title = {INSTRUCTION BUILT ON LEARNERS{\textquoteright} PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE BY USING THE VARIATION THEORY}, journal = {Problems of Education in the 21st Century }, volume = {6}, year = {2008}, month = {May/2008}, type = {Original article}, chapter = {86-95}, abstract = {This chapter discusses teaching based upon pupils{\textquoteright} previous knowledge. As the world becomes more and more globalised, it is harder and harder for a teacher to form a picture of the pupils{\textquoteright} knowledge when planning instruction. However, without this information about pupils, it is impossible to know if the created learning situations are conducive to learning or if the pupils had already acquired knowledge about the learning object before the learning situation. In this study pupils{\textquoteright} previous knowledge is investigated in relation to how English as a Second Language is learnt when pupils have different mother tongues. In a phenomenographic study we found that pupils with three different mother tongues, when placed in the same learning situation, made errors which could be traced back to the structure of their mother tongue. This observation led to a learning study, in which variation theory was the theoretical point of departure, and in which three different research lessons with three different groups of pupils were carried out. The learning object was dependent possessives, and the pupils{\textquoteright} mother tongue was Swedish. As there is no differentiation between independent and dependent possessives in Swedish, the pupils could not discern the difference between these two forms. As Swedish has a differentiation between t- and n-gender, the puils wrongly assumed that the difference between my and mine was not connected to dependent and independent possessives but to gender. The results of our study show how teachers who are familiar with the pupils{\textquoteright} previous knowledge (mother tongue) can become aware of what mistakes they might make as ESL learners; this knowledge has a profound effect on instruction. In this way, teachers can also predict and plan what information is needed to develop learning situations which provide maximum opportunity to learn. They also understand what kinds of critical aspects are necessary to enable pupils to discern. As a result, teachers are more effective, which is reflected in better pupil results in the classroom. }, keywords = {contrastive linguistic, phenomenography, variation theory}, issn = {1822-7864}, url = {http://oaji.net/articles/2014/457-1392233451.pdf}, author = {Mona Holmqvist and Gunilla Lindgren and Jane Mattisson and Teresa Svarvell} }