Hur löser de uppgiften? : En studie av underkända och högt betygsatta provtexter i svenska och svenska som andraspråk

A large number of texts written by students in the subject of Swedish as a second language in the national test in Swedish and Swedish as a second language receive a failing grade, in comparison to texts written in the subject Swedish. Even though there are plausible explanations for the results, it is of great importance that we learn more about the situation to optimize conditions for all students to succeed. In this study I investigate how four different groups of students respond to the same writing instruction. Groups are formed by grades (fail and pass with distinction) and subject (Swedish and Swedish as a second langue). The focus is on the group Fail in Swedish as a second language. Building on Systemic functional linguistics and Labov’s theories on narratives of personal experiences, 66 texts are analyzed as to how they connect to the writing instruction and how they are temporally organized. The study also includes a survey of recurrent themes in the texts. The results show that most students, in all groups, generally respond to the writing instruction in the same way. They primarily act on the part of the instruction which explicitly expresses a request, and they organize the text to unfold chronologically in a specific past. Differences seem most of all to be connected to how the part of the instruction that frames the writing situation is handled by the students. This might be explained by different experiences and different understandings of the culture and situation