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This study investigated patterns of written language and the relation of oral language, phonological processing, verbal working memory and reading to written language in early writers with weak reading and/or spelling in grade 2 (n = 39). In grade 3, the students participated in an assessment of oral and written language. A resolved group with age typical oral language, phonological processing and reading (n = 11) performed better than their unresolved peers (n = 28) on almost all written language measures. Spelling, text length, grammatical accuracy and vocabulary diversity were the most challenging aspects for the unresolved group. Oral language correlated significantly with the composite written language score, text length and vocabulary diversity, while phonological processing was related to grammatical accuracy and working memory to the composite written language score and spelling. Word reading and reading comprehension were not related to any written language measures. Regression analyses confirmed that oral language contributed significantly to the variation in the composite written language score, text length and vocabulary diversity. The results emphasize the importance of oral language for written language in early writers with (a history of) weak reading and/or spelling.

I denna studie undersöks textlängd, narrativ kvalitet, lexikal variation och stavning i narrativa texter skrivna i årskurs 3 av elever identifierade med typisk respektive svag avkodning och/eller läsförståelse i en screening i årskurs 2. Deltagare är 16 elever med avkodningssvårigheter, 19 elever med läsförståelsesvårigheter, 12 elever med både avkodnings- och läsförståelsesvårigheter samt 16 elever med typisk avkodning och läsförståelse. Textmaterialet består av den fria narrativa skrivuppgiften i det nationella ämnesprovet i årskurs 3. Texterna analyseras med hjälp av kvantitativa mått på textlängd, narrativ kvalitet, lexikal variation och stavning samt deskriptiva och parametriska analysmetoder. Resultaten visar att det finns signifikanta skillnader i textlängd, narrativ kvalitet och lexikal variation mellan de fyra elevgrupperna. Alla tre grupper med lässvårigheter skrev signifikant kortare texter jämfört med gruppen med typisk läsförmåga. Narrativ kvalitet och lexikal variation visade sig vara särskilt utmanande för grupperna med läsförståelsesvårigheter. Stavning uppvisade inga signifikanta skillnader mellan några grupper. Sammantaget indikerar studien att elever med läsförståelsesvårigheter utgör en särskilt sårbar grupp i skrivutvecklingen.

Skriven textproduktion är en utmaning för många elever med språk- och lässvårigheter. Tidigare studier har visat att språklig förmåga, arbetsminne och fonologiskt processande utgör centrala förutsättningar inte bara för automatiserade processer i skrivandet (stavning och interpunktion) utan också för skrivprocesser på en högre kognitiv nivå (textens språkliga kvalitet, textorganisation och textlängd). I den föreliggande studien undersöker vi relationen mellan språklig förmåga, fonologiskt processande, verbalt arbetsminne, läsförmåga och skriven textproduktion hos 40 elever som identifierades med svag läs- och stavningsförmåga i årskurs 2. I årskurs 3 deltog dessa elever i en logopedutredning som omfattade en bedömning av fonologiskt processande, receptiv och expressiv språklig förmåga (ordförråd, grammatik och hörförståelse av text), korttidsminne, arbetsminne, ordavkodning, läsförståelse och icke-verbal problemlösning. Utfallet i logopedutredningen undersöktes i relation till den narrativa skrivuppgiften som eleverna genomförde i de nationella proven i svenska i årskurs 3. Elevernas texter analyserades utifrån ett flertal mått på textproduktion på olika nivåer: transkriptionsnivå (stavning och interpunktion), lexikal nivå (lexikal variation och densitet), meningsnivå (syntaktisk komplexitet, morfologiska och syntaktiska avvikelser) och textnivå (textlängd). Utifrån modellen ”Simple View of Writing” och resultat från tidigare forskning formulerades följande hypoteser: (1) receptiv och expressiv språklig förmåga, verbalt arbetsminne, avkodning och läsförmåga relaterar till textproduktion på ord- och meningsnivå och till mått på textnivå, och (2) fonologisk processande, avkodning och verbalt arbetsminne relaterar till stavning på transkriptionsnivån. Pearsons produktmomentkorrelation användes för att analysera relationen mellan språklig förmåga, fonologiskt processande, verbalt arbetsminne, läsförmåga och skriven textproduktion. Resultaten presenteras och diskuteras utifrån både metodologiska och teoretiska aspekter.

Introduktion: Den talspråkliga förmågan är en central del av språkförmågan. Den är av avgörande betydelse förbarns tänkande och lärande i (för)skolan och ligger till grund för läs- och skrivutvecklingen. Det ärdärför ett viktigt uppdrag för (för)skolan att stödja alla barn så att de får utveckla sina talspråkligaförmågor. I denna artikel presenteras resultaten från en studie av hur den fysiska miljön, lärtillfällena och interaktionerna i klassrum i årskurs 1 i Sverige stödjer barns talspråkliga utveckling.Artikeln är strukturerad enligt följande: Avsnitt 2 behandlar forskning om språkförmåga ochlärande samt stöd av språklig utveckling i klassrumskontexter. I avsnitt 3 beskrivs syfte och metod.Studiens resultat presenteras i avsnitt 4 och diskuteras i avsnitt 5. 

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children from minority groups have the right to learn, use and develop their indigenous/minority languages:

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language. (Article 30).

In Sweden, the parliament affirmed the right of national minorities to learn, use and develop their minority languages in 2005, and in 2009 this right was written into Swedish law (the Swedish Language Act 2009:600, and the Act on National Minorities and National Minority Languages 2009:724). However, Sweden continues to receive strong criticism from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (2015) for the lack of a comprehensive and structured approach towards minority language education, resources, materials, and teacher training.

Oral language development “is central to a child´s ability to access the curriculum and develop literacy skills” (Dockrell et al 2010). In a minority language context, supporting oral language skills is central for language maintenance and revitalization, and for developing a functional bilingualism. A primary goal for the Sami school in Sweden is to support each child’s functional Sami-Swedish bilingualism. Considering the importance of oral language, all children need an environment supportive of oral language development, and opportunities and interactions with more knowledgeable conversational partners to practice and develop oral language and communication skills for all languages. Supporting and enhancing oral language skills for the diverse learners in school settings can be challenging, and little is known about how bilingual children’s oral language development in Sami and Swedish is supported. Teachers can be supported by tools that they can use to describe the language learning environments, opportunities and interactions, and to develop their professional practice in the area of effectively supporting young bilingual children´s oral language development. In this presentation, we report on a pilot study that has adapted the Communication Supporting Classrooms Observation Tool (Dockrell et al 2015) to the Swedish school context. This adaption is a first step towards adapting and using this tool in bilingual North and South Sami (pre)schools. The results of the pilot study are discussed in relation to the challenges of setting up a research project examining the support of oral language development in both the indigenous Sami languages and the national language Swedish.

In Chapter 5 Mikael Vinka, Christian Waldmann, David Kroik and Kirk Sullivan consider the creation of corpora in the Saami language and how these can be used to support minority language education in pre-school. Using examples both from the CHILDES database and from South Saami they illustrate how corpora may support the development of culturally relevant teaching materials.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children from minority groups have the right to learn, use and develop their indigenous/minority languages, and a primary goal for the Sami school in Sweden is to support each child’s functional Sami-Swedish bilingualism. However, Sweden continues to receive criticism from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for the lack of a comprehensive and structured approach towards minority language education, resources, materials, and teacher training. Oral language development is central to a child ́s ability to access the curriculum and develop literacy skills. All children need an environment supportive of oral language development, and opportunities and interactions with more knowledgeable conversational partners to practice and develop oral language skills. Little is known about how bilingual children’s oral language development in Sami and Swedish is supported. Teachers can be supported by tools that they can use to describe the language learning environments, opportunities and interactions, and to develop their professional practice in the area of effectively supporting young bilingual children ́s oral language development. We report on a pilot study that has adapted the Communication Supporting Classrooms Observation Tool to the Swedish school context. This adaption is a first step towards adapting and using this tool in bilingual North and South Sami (pre)schools. The results of the pilot study are discussed in relation to the challenges of setting up a research project examining the support of oral language development in both the indigenous Sami languages and the national language Swedish.

This presentation considers creation of spoken minority language corpora and how these can be used to support minority language education across the entire educational spectrum. The Saami languages are a group of minority languages spoken in Northern Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. In the Saami context there is currently one major language project that focuses on North Saami, Davvisámegiel mánáid giellaovdáneapmi (DASAGO), and is building two longitudinal corpora, one for monolingual acquisition and one for bilingual North Saami/Norwegian. Of the Saami languages, North Saami is the most widely spoken with approximately 25 000 speakers. The DASAGO project has no explicit educational objectives, yet its findings will be of relevance for the development of educational materials for North Saami. Another project creating an oral language corpus for a Saami language is Mávulasj, a spoken Lule Saami documentation project that has explicit educational objectives. Lule Saami has approximately 500 speakers. Creating spoken language corpora that are of relevance for education is complex. Drawing on the experiences of creating these corpora, we explore the complexities of spoken minority language corpus creation through an ongoing South Saami project based in Umeå, Sweden. South Saami is a language with circa 500 speakers and in contrast to North Saami the speakers are spread over a large geographic area. The low number of speakers, the geographical spread, and the even lower number of advanced first language speakers, poses additional problems for the South Sami spoken corpus’ construction, and its use in the development of education materials. Using examples, we illustrate how corpora can be used to support the development of culturally relevant innovative teaching materials that can assist in language revitalization, and illustrate how corpora can be misused and result in linguistically incorrect teaching materials.