I artikeln presenteras en fallstudie av några flerspråkiga elevers naturvetenskapliga skrivande och deras texters funktioner. Texterna är skrivna på svenska och på elevernas förstaspråk. Syftet med studien är att förstå vilken betydelse elever, föräldrar och lärare framhåller i fråga om att eleverna får använda sin flerspråkighet i arbetet med några skoltexter. Vi fokuserar på tre elever med albanska som det gemensamma språket med föräldrarna och svenska som sitt skolspråk och det som ofta används vid aktiviteter utanför skolan. Studien pågår i en flerspråkig klass, årskurs 1–3, där svenska språket är normen. Skolan ligger i ett mångkulturellt område. Undervisningen sker på svenska och alla talar företrädesvis svenska i klassrummet. Två elevers texter har analyserats och deras svenska text har översatts till albanska. Eleverna har alltså texter på de två språk de använder mest och visar på så sätt sin flerspråkighet i en naturvetenskaplig text. Detta överensstämmer med teorin om translanguaging (Lewis, Jones & Baker 2012) där flerspråkigheten ska synliggöras och elevernas förstaspråk ska få ett egenvärde även i undervisningen. I studien tillämpas också diskursteorier (Fairclough 2001), genom att vi analyserar texterna och relaterar till den förståelse som lärare, elever och föräldrar ger uttryck för i intervjuer. Resultaten diskuteras utifrån språkliga, kunskapsmässiga och sociala funktioner.

It has been suggested that speakers with an L1 with lexical tones may have an advantage when it comes to perceptually discriminating between different tones in another tone language (Kaan, Wayland, Bao & Barkley, 2007). Other studies in L2‐learning show that this is not entirely the case (van Dommelen & Husby 2009, So & Best 2010). A model of typological pitch prominence (Schaefer & Darcy, 2013) suggests that speakers of an L1 with a higher pitch prominence can perceive tonal contrast in another tone language better than those with an L1 of a lower pitch prominence. This study addresses the question: if Somali L1‐speakers make a systematical distinction in the tonal pattern when producing Swedish words with the two tonal accents – as both languages are of similar pitch prominence according to Schaefer and Darcy – and also to what extent they produce a tonal pattern assigned to either one of the tone accents. The adequate distinction is identified as such by native speakers/listeners of Swedish. Results revealed that a big discrepancy still remains between the number of correct identifications of the stimuli produced by the L1‐speakers of Swedish and those produced by L2‐speakers of Swedish with Somali as their L1. Having a typologically similar L1 does not seem to give enough support to handle the tone accent distinction in Swedish L2 adequately.

According to Tulving and Thomson (1973), similarity in encoding and recall contexts will facilitate recall. We investigated if similarity between the original voice event and the voice lineup helps people to identify the target from a voice lineup and helps improve the realism in participants' confidence judgments of the identification reports. Participants (n = 199) tried to identify a voice heard in a dialogue context that simulated two males, 22 and 27 years old, planning a burglary. In the Text-lineup condition six male speakers read a text from a book and in the Dialogue-lineup condition the same speakers had a dialogue with another male speaker. Each recording lasted approximately 30 seconds. The Text-lineup condition showed better identification accuracy, lower overconfidence and better calibration compared with the Dialogue-lineup condition. These results deviate from Tulving and Thomson's encoding specificity principle in memory psychology, maybe because text reading provides more useful voice features compared to dialogues.

Immigrants with Vietnamese as their L1 have been living in Sweden for a couple of decades. Vietnamese L1- speakers are also currently present in the SFI-classroom. The aim of this contribution is to present observed pronunciation features in L2-Swedish and is based on material produced by two L1- speakers of Vietnamese. We will also discuss those features of L2- pronunciation which lead to serious communication.

This study addresses the question of whether L1-speakers of Vietnamese – a tone language – and L1-speakers of Somali – a language with tonal accents – differ in degree of accuracy when producing words that carry either of the two tonal accents in L2-Swedish. Some previous studies suggest that it is an advantage when discriminating between different tones in another tone language, if a speaker’s L1 is also a tone language; while others show that this may not necessarily be the case. Accuracy was studied with the help of identification tests, and the results for the L2-speakers were matched with the results for L1-speakers. It is revealed that no adequate distinction is made between the tone accents by either of the two groups of L2-speakers. The two tonal patterns are equally often obscured by L1-speakers of Somali, whereas speakers of L1-Vietamese produced patterns that were more frequently identified as one of the Swedish word accents, but not the other one.