FACULTY OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SPECIAL EDUCATION

APPLICATION OF PROCESSABILITY
THEORY TO SFI STUDENTS’ L2 WRITING
COMPETENCIES

Reyhaneh Tajgardoun

Master’s thesis: 30 credits

Programme/course: L2EUR (IMER) PDA184
Level: Second cycle
Term/year: Autumn 2019
Supervisor: Birgitta Svensson
Examiner: Dawn Sander
Abstract

Master’s thesis: 30 credits

Programme/Course: L2EUR (IMER) PDA184
Level: Second cycle
Term/year: Autumn 2019
Supervisor: Birgitta Svensson
Examiner: Dawn Sander
Keywords: Swedish as a second language, second language acquisition, L2
writing, morphology, processability theory

Aim: The main purpose of this study is to study the written proficiency of SFI students at
different morphological learning levels, and their ability to conjugate verbs, nouns,
and adjectives using a wordless children book (frog-story).
Theory: This study tries to link SFI levels of written proficiency to the levels of Pienemann
hierarchy of language learning. Processability theory is a universal theory of L2
that is applicable to different languages. This theory has been adopted to cover not
only the process of L2 acquisition but also the development of grammatical forms.
PT demonstrated which L2 forms and which variants of grammatical forms are
processable at every developmental stage.

Method: The study is a linguistic study within language-learning using a combination of

primarily quantitative and qualitative methods. It utilizes a commonly used pictorial
frog-story (Mayer,1969) and an accepted taxonomic model of language acquisition,
the Pienemann model of processability hierarchy. The morphemes written by SFI
students were identified from qualitative data (narratives) and then processed via a
quantitative method (independent sample t-test).

Results: The study shows that Pienemann model can be applied to the writing skills of the
students of C and D levels of SFI.
In this study, the SFI students’ narrative abilities, the numbers of morphemes
written, and students’ competences to conjugate and put in agreement three main
word classes (verb, noun, and adjective) were evaluated. Independent Samples T-
test was used to confirm that writing competences of advanced-level (D level)
students are higher than writing competences of beginner-level (C level) students.
The analysis of the morphemes produced by the students revealed that beginner level
(C level) students demonstrated the 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels of Pienemann model of
processability hierarchy, while advanced-level students demonstrated higher results
at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels of the model.
Acknowledgements
My deepest appreciation goes to my supervisor, Birgitta Svensson, for her support, suggestions, and
inspirations.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of those who provided me with the possibility to
complete this Master thesis.

I would also like to thank all the participants in my thesis who have shared their time with me.

I would like to acknowledge with much appreciation my husband and my family who have always been
supportive and always believed in me.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my dearest friend Oxana Rosca who has been supportive and
providing me with the best suggestions.

Reyhaneh Tajgardoun (Renée)

October 2019, Gothenburg

” A new WORD is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion and like everything
metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the GRAMMAR of the
language”

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951

Table of contents

Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................................... 1
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Purpose ................................................................................................................................................. 3
2. Background .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Swedish educational system for adult immigrants ............................................................................... 4
A brief outline of Swedish morphology............................................................................................... 7
A brief outline of Processability Theory ............................................................................................ 10
3. Theoretical framework ....................................................................................................................... 11
Learnability process and Processability Theory ................................................................................ 14
4. Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 19
Frog, where are you? .......................................................................................................................... 20
Picture-elicited narrative .................................................................................................................... 21
Participants and Data Collection ........................................................................................................ 22
Ethical considerations ........................................................................................................................ 24
Limitation ........................................................................................................................................... 24
Additional Assisting Morphemes....................................................................................................... 25
5. Results and interpretations ................................................................................................................. 28
Independent sample t-test................................................................................................................... 28
Application of Pienemann model....................................................................................................... 39
English morphemes in the texts ......................................................................................................... 47
6. Discussion .......................................................................................................................................... 48
7. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 48
Further study ...................................................................................................................................... 49
8. References .......................................................................................................................................... 50
Appendices ............................................................................................................................................. 61
Appendix 1 - Number of students, narratives’ length and total verbs ............................................... 61
Appendix 2 - Number of nouns and adjectives .................................................................................. 62
Appendix 3 - Students’ information................................................................................................... 63
Appendix 4 - Frog where are you?..................................................................................................... 66
Appendix 5 - Personal inquiry ........................................................................................................... 74
Appendix 7 - knowledge requirement for Writing skill for SFI ........................................................ 77
Appendix 8 - Independent Sample Test with standard error and confidence intervals ..................... 81
Abbreviations

ELL English language learners

L1 First Language

L2 Second Language

LAD Language Acquisition Device

LFG Lexical-Functional Grammar

PT Processability Theory

SLA Second Language Acquisition

SFI Swedish for Immigrants

TL Target Language

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 1. Introduction
The SFI (Swedish For Immigrants) students come to classes with different educational and cultural
backgrounds to learn Swedish as a second language (L2) or as the target language (TL); thus, the way
of their writing language is dissimilar. Student's problems and difficulties in learning a new language
have various reasons, not always related to linguistic differences. However, investigation of learners'
Swedish written language proficiency can clarify specific difficulties that they experience in learning
the written skill of Swedish as L2.

What we learn and how we learn depends on the contexts in which we learn (Schleppegrell,2004, p.4).
Language appears in a variety of forms, including spoken, signed, and written forms (Stromqvist,
Nordqvist & Wengelin, 2004, p.359). We speak to be heard in order to be understood (Öhman, 1979;
Jakobson et al. 1952), we sign to be seen in order to be understood, and we write to be read in order to
be understood (Stromqvist, Nordqvist & Wengelin, 2004, p.360). The activities of speaking, signing,
and writing involves the language user's planning, execution, and monitoring of linguistic utterances
(Levelt 1989; Clark 1996). It is significant to state that the circumstances and the management of
understanding are very different between spoken and written communication.

This study tries to research on L2 writing proficiency in non-English languages and on Swedish L2
writing proficiency specifically. There are few studies on this topic in other languages than English. The
book "L2 writing beyond English" (2019), for example, is dealing with L2 writing in non-English
languages such as Japanese, Chinese but not Swedish. The theoretical framework for this study is
Processability Theory (PT) which is a universal theory of L2 and is applicable to different languages
(see, Pienemann, 1998).

It needs to be mentioned that several Swedish L2 studies were based on PT perspectives, for instance:
Glahn, Håkansson, Hammarberg, Holmen, Helenekide and Lund (2001), Philipsson (2008), Rahkonen
och Håkansson (2008), Eklund Heinoen (2009), Håkansson och Norby (2010). The studies that had
adopted PT in other languages are English (Charters, Dao & Jansen,2011), Arabic (Mansouri, 2000),
Italien (DiBiase & Kawaguchi, 2000), Chinese (Zhang, 2004) and Japanese (Kawaguchi, 2005; Itani-
Adams 2011). All of these studies also adopted a theoretical model of Lexical-Functional Grammar
(LFG) and the hierarchy of processing procedures of Processability Theory (Håkansson, 2014, p. 157).
The research presented in this paper aimed to investigate the use of vocabulary in narrative writing
proficiency by SFI language learners in different levels of learning.

I evaluated different levels (from beginner to advance) of narrative abilities, the number of morphemes
written and students' competences to conjugate and put in agreement three significant word classes
(verb, noun, and adjective).

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Some L2 theorists presume that adults learn a second language, but children acquire it. On the other
hand, it needs to be considered that adults can access the same natural LAD "language acquisition
device" that children. Krashen suggests that acquisition and learning are two different and separate
experiences, and knowledge is created through the acquisition. What L2 students learn by memorizing
operates as "monitor," which clarifies the attained information and is precisely the similar way as adults
learn L2. (Krashen, 1982, p.15). Conversely, the inventor of LAD "language acquisition device," Noam
Chomsky sited that "people learn language from pedagogical grammars by the use of their unconscious
universal grammar" (1975, p. 249).

I adopted Processability Theory (PT) to this study to cover not only the process of L2 acquisition but
also the development of grammatical forms. Pienemann 1998, demonstrated which second language
forms and which variants of grammatical forms are processable at every developmental stage. PT is
based on research into language processing and is formalized within Lexical-Functional Grammar
(LFG). In 1998, the postulates of the theory were applied to the L2 development of English, Japanese,
German, and Swedish, and likewise established in online experimentations (Pienemann, 1998).

Purpose
This research takes an inflectional morphology perspective on the written proficiency of Swedish for
immigrants (SFI) which is a neglected research area. It also deals with a method of how consequences
and forms are related to grammatical systems of the written Swedish language.

Main purpose of this project is studying the written proficiency of SFI students at different
morphological learning levels, and their ability to conjugate verbs, nouns, and adjectives using a
wordless children book (frog-story). In this study, I try to link SFI levels of written proficiency to the
levels of Pienemann hierarchy of language learning.

It needs to be specified that this study concerns three of the essential word classes in morphological
levels (noun, verb, and adjective) and paid no attention to discourse levels, which means that in this
study I did not analyze the events or describe the different unit of sentences in deferent narrations.
Additionally, this study is not taking parts in the details of cross-linguistic similarities or differences
between different languages based on the learners’ L1. Thus, as it was mentioned above, the principal
aim is to find out a level of SFI learner's proficiency in deferent word classes (noun, verb, adjective),
defined in processing procedures of the learning development hierarchy of PT. The research presented
in this paper aimed to investigate how SFI language learners in different levels of learning use
vocabulary in narrative writing proficiency.

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Therefore, the research questions of the study are:

1. Can Pienemann model be applied to different levels of writing skills of SFI students?
2. Do students of D-Level have better command on writing proficiency on Swedish as L2 than the
students of the C-Level when measured in accordance with Pienemann model?

2. Background
Swedish educational system for adult immigrants
In today's complex world, literacy means far more than learning to read and write to accomplish discrete
tasks. Instead, literacy is a form of social action where language and context co-participate in making
meaning (Halliday, 1978; Lemke, 1989).

In 2014, over 120,000 people immigrated to Sweden, about 58,000 women and 70,000 men, which was
an increase of 9.6% compared with 2013. At the same time, around 51,000 people emigrated, which
gives net immigration of approximately 75,000 people.

In 2015, Sweden's population increased by 103,662 people, and the increase in population was due to
an immigration overplus. The immigration excess amounted to 78,410 persons, 35,284 women, and
43, 126 men. The immigration surplus thus accounted for 77 percent of the population increase in 2015.
In 2015, 134,240 people immigrated to Sweden, about 60,641 women, and 73,599 men. This is an
increase of 7,274 people compared to 2014.

According to SCB (Statistics Sweden), immigration has significantly increased in Sweden. At the
beginning of the 2000s, around 60,000 people immigrated in a year. In 2016, the total immigration to
Sweden was the highest ever, with over 163,000 immigrants. Since then, immigration has decreased,
and in 2018, 133,000 people immigrated to Sweden.

The information above is not just about Sweden but around the world today; there are more and more
children and adults who, for individual, economic, or academic reasons, are multilingual. The fact is,
there are more bilingual brains on the planet than monolingual ones. Whether it be to find new literature,
friends, or business markets, or to maintain a connection with the historical past of a heritage language,
there are many reasons to learn something of an L2. There are several advantages of being exposed to a
second or third language, including cognitive advantages that can arise from achieving a particular level
of proficiency in a second language.

In Sweden, the National Agency for Education (Skolverket) is the central administrative authority for
the public school system, publicly organized pre-schooling, school-age childcare and for adult education
(Skolverket, 2015).

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SFI (Svenska för invandrare), Swedish for immigrants is municipal adult education in Sweden. It gives
the basic knowledge in Swedish and Swedish society. Participants will learn the Swedish language and
will learn to use the computer as a tool; it needs to be mentioned that it is tuition-free.

SFI begins in the 1960s, and it is a voluntary program offering free tuition to adult students with a mother
tongue other than Swedish (Skolverket, 2012b). The first curriculum of SFI was created in 1971, and it
was an education mainly for male workers to facilitate the settlement of newly arrived immigrants
(Papadopoulos, 2016), but now SFI and learning the Swedish language is located in the center of
education.

Based on learner's educational background, the SFI process has three learning levels as follow:

1. For those who have short or no school background from their home country. Course A - D.
2. For those who have 6-9 years of school background from their home country. Course B - D.
3. For those who have more than ten years of school background from their home country.
Course C - D.

According to Skolverket (2012c, p.8), the principal goals of adult education are:

1. To get information on the current and expected professional skills.

2. To give an opportunity for learners to get their knowledge and skills be improved and assessed.
3. To develop their self-knowledge (when a person knows his/her pros and cons of learning and
can control and direct their own learning process) and the ability to plan their study.
4. To take a position on life-long learning and vocational orientation basis of accumulated
experience and knowledge.
5. To enhance the student's ability to make an educated choice" or an informed choice.
6. To familiarize learners with working life and labor market conditions in Sweden in relation to
labor law and work environment in general and, if possible, to their study orientation.
7. To inform learners about opportunities for further education, practice and work in Sweden and
other countries, and
8. To educate learners about all changes in their occupational areas in pace with technical
development, about changes in social and working life and increased international collaboration,
and the need for personal development in the profession.

Similarly, to English, learning Swedish has four proficiencies; listening (höra), speaking (tala), writing
(skriva), and reading (läsa). The goals and knowledge requirements for different levels of proficiency
in Swedish for immigrants (SFI) have been regulated by Skolverket and are briefed here and in the
course plan (see Writing proficiency requirements in Appendix 7).

5
 1. Listening proficiency
2. Speaking proficiency
A. Oral interaction
B. Oral production
3. Reading proficiency
4. Writing proficiency

An SFI student is graded on every completed level. If the student received an approved grade from level
D, he or she is authorized to start Swedish As a Second language (SAS).

Swedish as a second language (SAS) therefore means more language teaching than requires the subject
Swedish. It is a core subject (course) both within primary adult education and high school adult
education adapted/developed for those who did not learn Swedish as L1.

According to Skolverket, in 2018, SFI students would have had the opportunity to develop their Swedish
spoken and written language skills that they would have gained confidence in Swedish language skills
and ability to express themselves in different contexts and for different purposes. Based on
Folkuniversitetet 2018, course plan SVA (svenska som andraspråk / Swedish as L2) has three
consequent levels. The strategies for each level are as follows;

SAS 1: The strategies for the first level are: writing different types of texts that are adapted to subject,
purpose, situation and recipient; using different types of vocabulary and structure them in different
communication situations; reading and talking about texts; knowing about linguistic and geographic
variations of Swedish language; making comparisons between the Swedish language and student's
mother tongue; Reflecting on language learning, emphasizing how oral situations and texts can be used
to build vocabulary and to develop student's language skills.

SAS 2: The course is a continuation of Swedish as Second Language 1 and includes: oral investigative
and argumentative presentations in and in front of a group; strategies for writing different types of texts
that are adapted to subject, purpose, recipient; Swedish vocabulary and structure in different
communication situations; reading and talking about texts; language variation in Sweden and in the
Swedish language.

SAS 3: The course is a continuation of Swedish as Second Language 2 and includes: participation in
conversations and discussions where arguments are used to clarify student's own opinions and to respond
to the arguments of others; written presentation of investigative and argumentative texts of a scientific
nature; using Swedish vocabulary and structure in different communication situations; reading and

6
talking about texts of various kinds with emphasis on structuring, referencing, evaluating and critically
reviewing larger text volumes.

A brief outline of Swedish morphology

The Swedish language is a satellite-framed language and provides rich morpho-syntactic means
especially for detailing direction, and like many other satellite-framed languages, it offers a wide variety
of lexical options and has simple present and past tenses. Moreover, it has a full-fledged aspectual
system (Stromqvist and Verhoven, 2004, p.113). Satellite-framed languages, such as the Germanic ones,
tend to incorporate or "frame" notions of direction into "satellites" of the verb, such as particles for
instance "tittar på" in Swedish (Stromqvist and Verhoven, 2004, p.117). Ragnarsdottir & Strömqvist
mentioned the verb ramla 'fall', which can be combined with the following five constellations of
morphemes: i / 'into', ner 'down', ner i 'down into', ner från 'down from', ut 'out'. These constellations
contain four different function words: i / 'into', ner 'down', från 'from', ut 'out'. Consequently, satellite-
framed languages bend to have an affluent menu of lexical options (p.134). Accordingly, Berman &
Slobin (1994) stated that the satellite-framed languages allow for detailed description of paths within a
clause, because the syntax makes it possible to accumulate path satellites to a single verb, along with
prepositional phrases that add further specification (e.g., the deer threw them off over a cliff in water)
(p.118-119).

Table 1
Swedish Indefinite and Definite Articles (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.399)

Table 2
Swedish Adjectival Morphology (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.399)

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The Swedish language has SVO (subject-verb-object) word order, and likewise, it has five different
forms of articles: en, ett "a" (indefinite, singular), det, den "the" (definite, singular), and de "the" (plural).
There are two different genders, uter, and neuter, with different morphemes, -(e)n and -(e)tt, for the
definite form (see Table 1). For instance, en hund (a dag), hunden (the dog), hundar (dogs), hundarna
(the dogs) or ett hus (a house), huset (the house), hus (houses), husen (the houses) (Pienemann &
Håkansson 1999, p.398-400).

In Swedish language an adjective agrees with its subject and diacritic features; gender, number, and
definiteness are simultaneously marked by one affix that can take one of three forms: a zero morpheme,
the suffix -t, and the suffix -a (see Table 2) (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.399). Table 3 illustrates
the Swedish nominal morphology. The morphological plural marking on nouns is based on the lexical
entry.

Table 3
Swedish Nominal Morphology (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.400)

A choice of a form of a marker depends on a declension class of the noun. There are five classes and a
set of irregular nouns; a zero morpheme, -or, -ar and -(e)r to mark utter, indefinite, and plural. Suffixes
on nouns agglutinate only if they express the following combination of diacritic features: (a) plural +
definite (+genitive) or (b) definite + genitive. For instance:

1. En grön groda. "a green frog."

2. Grodan är grön. "the frog is green."
3. Ett grönt hus. "a green house."
4. Huset är grönt. " the house is green."
5. Två gröna grodor. (two green frogs) => PL
6. Grodorna är gröna. (the frogs are green) => PL
7. Två gröna hus. (two green houses) => PL

As it is shown in these examples, each word in nominal phrases has an indication to illustrate if it is
singular or plural.

8
Table 4
Swedish Verbal Morphology (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p. 400)

Swedish has simple present and past tenses similar to English. It can have more than one verb in a verbal
phrase, the suffixes which have been illustrated in Table 4 can be added to a verb to indicate its tense.
This type of tense marking can, therefore, be classified as lexical morphology (Pienemann & Håkansson
1999, p. 402). For instance:

Vi talar svenska. "We speak Swedish."

Vi talade svenska. "We spoke Swedish."

Vi ska tala (Ø) svenska. " We will speak Swedish."

Vi har talat svenska. "We have spoken Swedish."

Table 5
Processing Procedures Applied to Swedish Morphology (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.398)

Table 5 illustrates the relevant morphological rules for Swedish according to Pienemann's (1998a,
1998b) hierarchy of processing procedures (Pienemann & Håkansson 1999, p.404) which is outlined in
the theory section.

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A brief outline of Processability Theory
Processability Theory explains the process of language learning based on Levelt's model of speech
production.

Figure 1. Levelt’s model of speech production (Hammarberg, 2004, p.53)

Figure 1 presents the most significant model of speech production, the model of Levelt (O'Grady et
al.,1996, p. 459). The production of speech (a message which is formed) starts in Conceptualizer; then
this message will collect linguistic form in Formulator. The formulator contains grammatical and
phonological processes, and it draws upon the lexicon (Wilfrid, 2010, p.15).

Levelt's model is recognized as a suitable basis for discussion about various speech production activities
in cognitive-linguistic researches. A theory of grammatical development of L2 learners which is based
on a learner's ability of cognitive processing of grammatical structures is a Processability Theory. The
aim of this theory is to identify and explain the natural developmental stages of L2 learning. PT defines
an appropriate ordering of L2 grammar acquisition in the morphological and synthetic field of
linguistics. This means that one step at a time must be completed by a learner to fulfill every requirement
and to proceed to the next level. This theory was proposed and developed by Pienemann from 1998 to
2003. It tells us about the structure of the second language learning with processing the component of
SLA (see next chapter).

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 3. Theoretical framework
This chapter is about the SLA theories witch some of them being related to this study. First, the relevant
theories are briefly outlined, and then the Processability Theory (PT), the principal theory of this study
is presented in detail.

In 1967 Corder, the professor of applied linguistics wrote an essay about "The Significance of Learners'
Errors" (SLA). In his essay, he rejected a behaviorist explanation of SLA and implied that learners use
their own essential inner linguistic processes to learn. He also stated that "the learner is using a definite
system of language at every point in his development" (Corder, 1986, p.10).

Subsequently, in 1972, Selinker wrote an article about interlanguage. In this article, he argued that L2
learners have their own specific linguistic systems which are different and independent. Larry Selinker
(1974) distinguished between teaching and learning circumstances. Moreover, he stated that when
someone is teaching or employs some method to help a learner to attain learning, he is also learning
because learning implicates "meaningful performance." This means that when an adult who already have
meaningful performance, tries to express meanings, he is in the process of learning.

Selinker (1974) presumed that there is a latent language structure in children's brains that can but is not
guaranteed to be activated. In other words, pursued learning does not occur automatically in every L2
learner. Consequently, he assumed that those adults who are successful in learning an L2, have operated
and managed to activate their latent or hidden language structure. This involves that they can obtain
facts about languages without any sort of explicit and accurate teaching. Furthermore, he argued that
there are differences in linguistic systems — interfering with the bosomed language structure.

He completed his presumption by "interlanguage". This means that there must be a different latent
language structure or there must be a separate linguistic system intervening. Selinker (1972) mentioned
that some L2 learners try to apply the rules of their L1 or native language to their target language (TL).
He called this mechanism "fossilization". As every latent psychological structure, interlanguage is made
up of five processes:

1: language transfer, 2: transfer of training, 3: strategies of L2 teaching, 4: strategies of L2

communication and 5: overgeneralization of the L2 linguistic material (Abrahamsson, 2009, p.111).
Selinker (1972) interpreted fossilization, as certain target-language-deviating forms that tend to remain
in learner's learning system without being further developed. Finally, Abrahamsson (2009) defined
fossilization as the features of the TL that are no longer developed and as deviated TL rules and forms
that become permanent parts of the interlanguage system of a learner regardless of further L2-exposure,
corrections or explicit grammatical explanation (p. 115).

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These five processes are not necessarily conscious and facilitate the following statements:
Language transfer can be clarified as the effects of L1; transfer of training is the consequences of
recognizable L1 items in training process which are used to teach the L2, strategies of L2 teaching is the
application of a learner's L1 method to the L2 material, strategies of L2 communication is the results
from a learner's L1 method of communication with native speakers of the L2; and the last process is
overgeneralization of the semantic features and rules of L2. Moreover, some other problems are being
encountered, and no one can say what is a successful learning per se (Selinker, 1972, p.224).

Later in 1982, Krashen stated that language begins with two important words which are acquisition and
learning. He calls the acquisition a natural way, synonymous to picking up a new language. In other
words, the acquisition is subconscious. For instance, once a person can detect someone's linguistic error
but cannot say what is precisely incorrect, that means this person acquired the language unconsciously.
Learning, however, is a conscious act, which means, one willfully learns about the rules and grammar.
In the learning process, the air correction helps sufficiently. For example, you make a mistake, and
someone corrects you; then you change the idea about how the rule works. According to Krashen,
acquisition-learning happens when you speak L2 fluently. Fluency comes from what you acquired
unconsciously and from all the rules that you learned to act as a monitor. In 1975 Krashen suggested a
hypothesis that in pedagogical terms, the acquisition gives us fluency, and learning gives us accuracy.

Consequently, we need and want both to speak and write easily, fluently, and grammatically correct.
He, therefore, argued for a balanced program which means, for example, two days a week grammar and
two days a week conversation. He cited that, people acquire the language in the same way, just as all
are digesting the food in the same way. Krashen pointed that the most significant concept of the language
is acquiring language in only one way and that is: we acquire language when we understand it;
accordingly, we do not acquire language when producing it or learning the grammar rules or get our
errors corrected, however, motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety are the most significant segments of
acquiring L2, this means that low motivation, low self-confidence, and low anxiety are not proper inputs
(Larsen-freeman & H.long, 1991, p.412). Consequently, Krashen came up with five hypotheses on SLA
(second language acquisition):

1. Acquisition-learning distinction: the process/ability to develop L2 competence in adults is the

same as in children acquiring L2, and it is a subconscious process.
2. The natural order hypothesis suggests a specific order of acquisition of grammatical structures.
3. The monitor hypothesis states that the acquisition in conscious learning is responsible for how
we become fluent in an L2.
4. Input hypothesis infers that in order to acquire language, a learner should move from one stage
to another. Children acquiring an L2 in a natural environment usually go through a "silent

12
 period" and begin to produce utterances in the L2 when they are ready for it (Tulldahl, 2004).
Tulldahl (2004) stated that "L2 learners in traditional language classes are normally not allowed
this silent period, and they have to produce utterances in the L2 although they are not ready yet.
Then the result is interference from the L1, which means that learners use L1 rules when an L2
rule is not available. What we need, according to Krashen 1985, is to obtain comprehensible
input, which is real language acquisition. (Tulldahl,2004, p.9)
5. Affective Filter hypothesis proposes such variables as motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety
playing a significant role in a learner's success in SLA (Larsen-freeman & H. long,1991, p.383).

In 1987, Barry McLaughlin claimed that regarding adult-child differences in acquiring L2, several types
of research showed that the adults do certainly better in syntax and semantics, while younger children
do better in phonological development. Krashen has not attempted to define whether the given process
contains acquisition or learning, and he did not make an accurate distinction between them. McLaughlin
mentioned that Krashen's theory was cognitive theory, and the interlanguage must be evaluated as well.
Subsequently, he defines the interlanguage theories as: "(1) the learner's system at a single point in time
and (2) the range of interlocking systems that characterizes the development of learners over time"
(McLaughlin, 1987, p.60).

Several findings showed that L1 does play an enormous role though it cannot predict what sort of error
an L2 learner will make and why. The studies show that errors are due to either intralingual or
interlingual factors, or both. The significant issues that became topical after the error-analysis period
were (1) How systematic and how a variable is an interlanguage? (2) How are interlanguages acquired?
(3) What is the role of the first language? (McLaughlin, 1987, p.69). Then the most linguistically
oriented researchers like Huebner (2006 & 2009) started to study both systematicity and variation in
interlanguage development. Huebner found the "chaos" which was simply appearing because the learner
was changing his/her hypotheses about the L2. This systematicity "chaos" is below the "superficial
chaos" and happens at a similar stage of development: a learner might use a rule on one situation but
use a different one in another situation. Accordingly, it can be stated that interlanguage is systematic
because it shows sufficient order in its development. Interlanguage is based on a learner's experiences
with L2 and can be activated when one attempts to learn L2, and, likewise, it can fossilize or terminate
developing.

Interlanguage happens when a learner borrows patterns from his/ her mother tongue, extends patterns
from the target language and expresses meanings by using L2 words and grammar, which are already
known to him/her. Thus, it can be assumed that the interlanguage is unique, it contains ungrammatical
sentences copied from the speaker's original language and, according, to Selinker (1972) it is systematic,
dynamic and variable.

13
Learnability process and Processability Theory
Learnability Theory and Processability Theory form a theoretical network for the present study. In
rationalist tradition, every learnability theory identifies four factors of learnability analysis (e.g., Wexler
and Pinker, 1979):

1) target grammar (a linguistic knowledge),

2) linguistic data input for a learner,
3) learning device that must acquire a targeted grammar given a certain set of knowledge
contained in
4) the initial state of the learner's grammar.

The overall idea is that a learnability theory must specify how a learner develops from his/her initial
state to the target grammar with an available input and a given learning device (Pienemann &
Håkansson, 1999, p.385). It is deep-rooted in how a learnability theory is structured to address a specific
linguistic problem, a 'logical problem' in language acquisition: to connect a representation of linguistic
knowledge to the acquisition of that knowledge (Wexler 1982, p. 288-315). To that end, Wexler (1982)
recommended a rationalist approach to learnability theories.

Felix (1984), Clahsen (1992), Gregg (1992 and 1996) are the grammar-based-oriented researchers who
noted that learnability theory is limited to explaining the acquisition of the linguistic knowledge and that
there are at least two sets of facts that a theory of language acquisition must also explain (Pienemann,
1998, p.4):

1) What enables a learner to attain linguistic competence?

2) What causes describe the route of the development of this competence? To follow?

Pinemann 1998 and Gregg 1996, answer these questions as follows:

Answer to question (1) is, the classical basis for Chomsky's assumption of a Universal Grammar, while
question (2) has only more recently been recognized as a part of the learnability problem. They define
question (2) as the 'developmental problem' (Gregg,1996). Moreover, Pienemann mentioned that to
explain the developmental problem, vital psychological aspects of human language processing have to
be investigated because natural developmental routes are, at least in part, caused by the architecture of
the human language processor.

The premise of Processability Theory is possible structural options, will be produced by a language
learner only if the necessary processing procedures are available; Processability Theory primarily deals
with the nature of computational mechanisms and the way in which they are acquired (Pinemann, 1998,
p.5). According to Pinemann & Håkansson 1999, "The logical problem basically describes the following

14
paradox: Children acquire the basic principles of their native language in a relatively short period of
time and on the basis of limited linguistic input, although many of these principles are considered
impossible to infer from the observations made by the learner."

The following processing procedures form the hierarchy that underlies Processability Theory (Table 6
and Table 7) (with the highest level placed at the top of hierarchy):

5. the subordinate clause procedure — if applicable.

4. the S-procedure

3. the phrasal procedure

2. the category procedure

1. lemma access

Table 6
Implicational Sequence of Processing Procedures (Pinemann, 1998, p.79)
Order of development

Procedures 1 2 3 4 5

Subordinate clause procedure - - - - +

S-procedure - - - + +

Phrasal procedure - - + + +

Category procedure - + + + +

Word or lemma access + + + + +

Table 7
Processing Procedures and their Structural Outcomes (Pienemann, 1998; Hammarberg 2004, p. 56;
Abrahamsson, 2009, p. 125)
Processing procedure Structural outcome

5. Subordinate clause procedure Main and subordinate clause

4.S-Procedure Interphrasal information exchange

3.Phrasal procedure Phrasal information exchange

2.Category procedure Lexical morphemes

1.Word or lemma Words

15
Furthermore, Pienemann cited that the logico-mathematical hypothesis space is further constrained by
the architecture of human language processing (Pienemann, 1998, p. 1), and PT in its contemporary
formulation is based on the interplay between a processing theory and a theory of linguistic knowledge.
This observation is fully explicit and applies to the whole range of phenomena captured by the
interacting theories of language processing and linguistic knowledge. Additionally, PT can account for
entire systems of morphosyntax rather than isolated morphosyntactic aspects (Pienemann, 2015, p.124).

In PT a set of crucial grammatical encoding procedures are arranged based on the sequence of activation
in the language process, and it is indicated that this sequence follows an implicational pattern in which
each procedure is a necessary prerequisite for the following procedure. The following is a simplified
account of the Processability Hierarchy illustrating information exchange required for the insertion of
English morphemes; it can be applied to many other target languages likewise.

Figure 2. A simplified account of the Processability Hierarchy illustrating information exchange

required for the insertion of English morphemes. (Pienemann, 2015, p. 128)

Pienemann (2015) illustrates the processability hierarchy with the aspect of constituent structure with
three examples in 3 different levels of constituent structures that are category, phrase, and sentence. The
locus of exchange shows the type of information transfer possible at each level. Further morphological
structures for L2 are illustrated as examples that comply with each level. Finally, the information transfer
for each generation is demonstrated in the last column. For instance, for a noun phrase "two kids" (e.g.,
in the sentence "he has two kids") the information "plural" only has to be exchanged between the
determiner and the noun (Pienemann, 2015, p. 128-129). See Figure 2.
According to PT, learners are constrained in entertaining hypotheses about the structure of the TL by
what they can process. Hence the focus is on the effect of processing constraints on possible structural
hypotheses rather than on access to universal principles of language (White, 2003).

16
A dynamic view of language acquisition requires a view of what is being acquired, how the learning
task is constrained, and how a learner progresses from one point to the next one. As it is pointed out
above, PT is built on the premise that learnability is a logico-mathematical problem but crucially that
"the logico- mathematical hypothesis space is further constrained by the architecture of human language
processing" (Pienemann, 1998a, p. 1).

PT outlines two sets of constraints:

(1) constraints on human language processing

(2) the mathematical aspect of the dynamics of language acquisition processes (Pienemann, 2015,
p.134).

PT maintains an explicit position on the role of L1 transfer, known as the Developmentally Moderated
Transfer Hypothesis (DMTH) (Pienemann, 1998a, 1998b; Pienemann et al., 2005). The DMTH is a
component of PT (see also Pienemann & Keßler, 2011). The fundamental logic of the DMTH is that
language transfer is constrained by processability, in particular by the capacity of the L2 learner's
language processor, which plays a significant role in it. L2 learner's development provides the ground
capacity for the L2 learner's stage of acquisition (Pienemann, 1998a, 2005). Only those grammatical
features can be transferred that can be processed within the current capacities of the L2 processor; in
other words, the L2 learners can only transfer features from the L1 when they are developmentally ready
to acquire them (see Pienemann et al., 2005, p. 85). Pienemann, Di Biase, Kawaguchi, and Håkansson
(2005) reviewed several extensive studies on L1 and L2 transfer that include a wide range of
typologically different languages and support DMTH. Lenzing (2013) provides an up-to-date review of
research on L1 and L2 transfer and of a theory debate behind it.
Moreover, Pienemann (1984) mentioned the Teachability Hypothesis which put forward long before PT
was conceptualized. It assumes that the effect of teaching intervention is constrained by the learner's
current state of development. When the Teachability Hypothesis was developed in the 1980s, it was
based on two fundamental premises:

(1) natural SLA and formal SLA are not fundamentally different

(2) processing strategies (as assumed at the time and therefore before PT was formalized) are implicitly
ordered.

It was concluded that: (1) learners cannot circumnavigate the next developmental stage (through formal
instruction), (2) formal instruction may be beneficial if timed correctly in developmental terms-
assuming a narrow gap between procedural and declarative knowledge.

17
The primary reason for adopting PT for this study might be cited by Pienemann and Håkansson 1999
that this theory "is not designed to contribute anything to the question of the innate or learned origin of
linguistic knowledge or the inferential processes by which linguistic input is converted into linguistic
knowledge. Instead, it is the sole objective of processability theory to determine the sequence in which
procedural skills develop in the learner" (Pienemann & Håkansson, 1999, p.386). The second reason is
that PT signifies an intent to go beyond a general obligation to a procedural skill.

PT includes a minimal, but the explicit set of assumptions about the initial state and assumes that formal
aspects of grammar development out of the minimal components contained in the initial state shaped by
processing constraints and generative entrenchment. The focus of PT-based research and many other
approaches to SLA development is not on factors external to SLA but on the inner mental processes that
drive key aspects of the dynamics of SLA. As an approach to SLA, PT can account for entire systems
of morphosyntax rather than isolated morphosyntactic aspects, and it contains clear and operationalized
criteria for developmental and variational aspects of L2 systems.

It needs to be mentioned two significant bases of PT, which are:

1. It assumes basic notions of the constituency and the one-to-one mapping of semantic roles to be
present in the initial state. All other formal aspects of language development from this. Also, the basic
notion of predicate-argument structure is assumed to be part of the initial state.

2. PT contains a hierarchy of mapping processes. This hierarchy predicts explicitly the sequence in
which mapping processes and the required grammar develop in the learner (Pienemann, 2015, 145-146).

Numerous authors such as Levelt, 1978; Rossman, & McLeod, 1983; McLaughlin, 1987; McLaughlin,
Hulstijn, 1990 and Schmidt, 1992 consider that language acquisition is the acquisition of procedural
skills. Their points of view need to be completed by psychological aspects to confirm that the
development of L2 involves the procedure of automatization of linguistic processes. There has been a
lot of different stages in SLA research by focusing on errors, but scientists' attention has been shifted to
different facets of the interlanguage difficulty, which means that L2 can be learned despite these
difficulties, which are another focus of this study.

18
 4. Methodology
To address research questions that arise from different theoretical orientations and require different
methodological procedures (Rahman, 2016. p. 106) I adopted a combination of (primarily)
quantitative and qualitative methods. I used a commonly used pictorial frog-story (Mayer,1969) and an
accepted taxonomic model of language acquisition, the Pienemann model of processability hierarchy.
The morphemes written by SFI students were identified from qualitative data (narratives) and then
processed via a quantitative method (independent sample t-test).

Quantitative research methods allow for a large sample size and more variables and make testing
research trustworthy (Rahman, 2016. p. 106). Many studies found that language testing and assessment
research prioritizes quantitative methods as an effect of its overwhelmingly larger rate of use by
researchers around the world. Bryman 2012 defined quantitative research as "A research strategy that
emphasis quantification in the collection and analysis of data..." (p. 35). This method helps to investigate
the answers to the questions starting with ‘how many,' ‘how much' and ‘to what extent' (Rasinger, 2013,
p.10). Quantitative research is based on deductive logic and focuses on those aspects of social behavior
which can be quantified and patterned rather than just finding out them and interpreting their meanings.
The quantitative findings are generalizable to a whole population or a sub-population because they
involve large, randomly selected samples (Carr, 1994, p. 716-721). Consequently, the data can be
interpreted via statistical analysis, and, since statistics are based on the principles of mathematics, a
quantitative approach is viewed as scientifically objective and rational (Carr, 1994; Denscombe, 2010).

In this study, the results are presented in tables, and the investigation is considered as quantitative
research. Tables present the numbers of Swedish verbs, nouns, and adjectives written by SFI students
in their written tasks. The results of the quantitative analysis are discussed and interpreted in the result
chapter.

Qualitative method of data collection in language testing and assessment research helps the researcher
to achieve more profound insight into designing, administering, and interpreting language assessment.
However, a small sample size sometimes makes the results unreliable and ungeneralizable (Tierney &
Clemens, 2011, p.21). Denzin and Lincoln 1994 claimed that "Qualitative research is multi-method in
focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter" (p. 2).

Maanen apparently presents qualitative research as a potential method when defines it as "an umbrella
term covering an array of interpretive techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate, and
otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring
phenomena in the social world" (1979, p. 520).

19
An overview of the participant's information (level of studying SFI, daytime and evening, age, gender,
L1, number of years in Sweden, occupation and their Swedish interaction) can be seen in (Appendix 3).
Correct and incorrect verbs (imperative, infinitive, present tense, past tense, perfect, and future tenses)
can be seen in (Appendix 1). Nouns (definite and indefinite) and adjectives have been mentioned
predominantly in (Appendix 2). In this study, the word "correct," means correct in conjugating of
different word classes.

For this study, I asked participants in deferent SFI levels to go through the 24 pictures of "Frog, where
are you?" picture book (which are presented in Appendix II) and to write a narration (berättelse in
Swedish) in their own words. They were allowed to ask their teacher about different word classes (such
as noun, verb and adjective and perchance adverb). Nevertheless, the teacher in level C and D would
not write any sentences but vocabulary. Moreover, the participants were not allowed to use a dictionary
or their mobile phones.

Afterward, teachers wrote the vocabularies which the learners asked about and classified them into
different groups of word classes. I wrote those morphemes and divided them into different groups as it
is shown in tables 1,2,3 and 4. Pienemann and Håkansson suggested that "a word needs to be added to
the target language lexicon before its grammatical category can be assigned. The grammatical category
of the lemma is needed before a category procedure can be called." (1999, p. 390). Hence, the learners
were provided with necessary morphemes.

Firstly, to analyze the data, I ran descriptive analyses, counting the number of words and placing them
in different groups as correct or incorrect conjugating of verbs, nouns, and adjectives and testing the
differences between SFI levels (See appendix 1 and 2).

Secondly, I analyzed the errors based on the PT theory and to find different-level situations in the PT
hierarchy. This study, as mentioned before, is not focused on discourse levels of the texts but is
specifically looking at the morphological levels. This means that lexical derivational morphology (word
formation) was adopted to study Swedish words and their interrelationships.

Frog, where are you?

In Mercer Mayer's picture-book (see Appendix I), the following story is represented: a boy has a dog,
and a frog; the frog get away from its bottle; the boy and his dog look for it everywhere, through woods,
across hills, over a cliff, and, at the end, the boy and the dog find the frog among its frog friends, and
they return home with a baby frog.

20
This book contains pictures of a journey story, it is a valuable resource to investigate writing proficiency
of the learners which has different languages and the focus is on the investigation of learner's
morphological level (Berman & Slobin 1994; see also Slobin 1991, 1994; Ozsaliskan & Slobin 1998;
Ozyurek & Ozcahskan 1998; Wilkins 1997). The frog story contains several occasions and events of
different categories. For instance, Pictures 11 and 12 (see Appendix 4) show several temporally
overlapping events for the use of tense, aspect, and means for temporal clause linkage in the linguistic
construction of the narrative. Pictures 16 and 18 show an episode that is rich in motion events.
(Stromqvist and Verhoven, 2004, p.8) In this frog-story research, a great deal of attention has been
devoted to the morphology level of linguistics. My intention is to investigate Swedish learner's ability
in writing a narrative and the number of lemmas which they use in their stories based on Pienemann
hierarchy of language learning.

Picture-elicited narrative
The method for frog-story research is simple but noticeable and powerful. The ways of writing the frog
story are characteristic of a learner's language, skills, or problems. Hence, it is not surprising that the
method has achieved a great deal of popularity.

According to Stromqvist and Verhoven (2004), "The frog-story methodology is perfectly neutral with
respect to the source and target languages" (p.12). This method has numerous privileges. For instance,
the learners (except few), in different age groups enjoy telling the story or ask about new vocabularies
and try to write a narrative.

Stromqvist and Verhoven (2004), listed a few advantages of using frog-story as follows (p.5):

1. The type of plot represented by the frog story is a cross-culturally pertinent theme.
2. The data elicited through the frog story represents connected meaningful discourse.
This allows the analyst not only to perform lexical and grammatical analyses on the
data but also to identify discourse functions served by the narrators' lexical and
grammatical choices (for example, introducing versus maintaining a reference to story
characters or foregrounding versus backgrounding story situations).
3. Written narrative based on the picture story "Frog, where are you?" is a complex and
demanding task, sensitive to cognitive and cultural factors.
4. The frog story is fictional.

By adopting the frog-story narrative as a method, I induced participants to perceive and interpret the
objects individually (e.g., sleepers, jar, beehive…) and find out their relations to each other (e.g.,
sleepers on the floor, the frog in the jar). They can describe the boy, the dog, and the frog by giving

21
them proper names and expressing their thoughts or feelings. The characters in the frog-story are
involved in several different situations (e.g., moving, looking somewhere, or falling down) which gives
the opportunity to the participants to illustrate and use as much vocabulary as they can. They can express
and explain the background of each picture and whether the characters are inside or outside the home
(e.g., moon, night, forest). Simultaneously, the learners can be involved emotionally by the characters
and try to evaluate, add, justify, or explain different situations. It needs to be noted that a collection of
articles which are related to the frog story is in the book "Relative events in narrative, typological and
contextual perspective." This book contains a relative study of elicited narrative production, across
languages, cultures, modalities like speech, sign, writing, and settings (Strömqvist and Verhoeven,
2004).

Participants and Data Collection

The participants of this study are forty adult SFI learners with different mother tongues (L1),
occupations, and Swedish interactions (Appendix 3). Sample characteristics are presented in Tables 8 –
10. Table 8 shows the gender distribution for the total sample, Table 9 illustrates gender percentage in
subsamples: groups C and D (SFI levels) and Table 10 presents descriptive statistics of ages across both
groups.

Table 8 Table 9
Gender Distribution in Total Sample Descriptive Statistics of Participants’ Age in
Frequency Percent Groups C & D
Female 23 57.5 Statistics
Male 17 42.5 Age
C Level N Valid 20
Total 40 100.0
Missing 0
Mean 31.00

Table 10 Std. Deviation 6.633

Gender Distribution in Groups C and D. Minimum 23
Groups Gender Frequency Percent Maximum 47
C Level Female 12 60.0 D Level N Valid 20
Male 8 40.0 Missing 0
Total 20 100.0 Mean 33.30
D Level Female 11 55.0 Std. Deviation 5.202
Male 9 45.0 Minimum 27
Total 20 100.0 Maximum 44

The data for this study has been obtained via Mayer's (1969) children story picture book "Frog, where
are you?" (Mayer 1969; Appendix 4). The book was used as a material to provoke narratives from forty

22
adults who were learning Swedish at SFI. The book contains only pictures, with no text. The pictures
present a set of perceptual components which narrators can decide to comprise, include, stress or ignore
when writing a story. "Frog, where are you?" has been already used as research material. For instance,
Berman and Slobin, used "Frog, where are you?" to describe differences within languages in the way
people talk about events. They presented the findings on crosslinguistic and developmental differences
in their book “Relating events in narrative” (1994). They brought together three essential and productive
trends in research on languages, cognition, and development (e.g., Karmiloff- Smith, 1979). They found
out that nine-years children can create an explicit large-scale story structure, to express temporary and
causal connections and create an evaluative reference to the state of mind of the characters in the story.
In these respects, their narrative production is approaching adult-like skills. (Strömqvist and Verhoeven,
2004, p.10).

For this study first, I asked the students in B-level to browse through the 24 pictures of the booklet frog,
where are you? Their teacher made mind mapping and wrote different words/ vocabularies on the board:
Noun/ substantive that learners mentioned were as follows: pojke (boy), natt (night), hund (dog), lampa
(lamp), säng (bed). Subsequently, the teacher included: en måne (a moon), en glasburk (a glass jar), en
toffla/, plural. tofflor (slippers), en groda (frog), ett träd (a tree), en bikupa (a beehive), en mullvad (a
mole), en uggla (an owl), ett rådjur (a deer).

Sover (sleep), går ut (go out), vaknar (wake up) and öppnar (open) were the verbs mentioned by learners.
The only adjective which has been mentioned by learners was "arg" (angry). Afterward, the teacher
went through each picture, talked about them, and wrote one or more sentences for all 24 pictures
(Appendix 6).

The chosen levels were B, C, and D, both day course and evening course. In C and D levels, participants
were shown a copy of the picture storybook and asked to write a story. They then went through the
booklet, picture by picture. After browsing the pictures, participants asked to write a story while trying
to imagine different moments "if they want." I mentioned that the protagonists of the book could have
names, the objects can have different colours, and the characters can have different sensations.
Simultaneously, I told them that they could ask different words they need to write a story, and the tense
of the narration can be present or past.

SFI students on daytime courses have everyday three-hour sessions (five days a week). However,
evening learners have three-hour classes twice a week, which means that daytime students have 15 hours
a week to learn Swedish while the evening group study six hours in a week. The materials (books,
booklet, and so forth) for daytime sessions are not the same as for evening classes. In daytime classes,
teachers usually follow the chapters of a particular textbook, and students have the opportunity to borrow

23
the book during sessions. The books are Mål 1 for B, Mål 2 for C and Mål 3 for D levels. Meanwhile,
teachers have at least two different copies of the other books which are related to topics that he/she chose
to teach. However, in the evening, students do not follow a specific book. Teachers make copies of
different chapters of the books and bring them to the classes again related to the topic that she/he has
planned to teach.

Ethical considerations
Ethical considerations of research are the norms that dictate how a researcher should act so that his or
her research does not harm other people. The researcher's behaviour has been increasingly constrained
by the codes of ethical conduct which require investigators to act in ways that do as little harm as possible
to the people they study. By ethical research norms (Howe & Moses, 1999), participants' names, gender,
age, and ethnicity were kept confidential. In this study, the information on gender, age, and the
participant’s professions are the demographic data of the sample. They were collected not for data
analysis for this study but as a description of the sample. While this study will be connected later to
other research studies on this topic, there will be a need for the definitions of demographic data.

I informed the participants that: their participation is voluntary; The study is anonymous, they need not
report their names, nevertheless gender/ age and occupation will be used in the study. Then I highlighted
that their work would not be graded, and the result of the study would have no impact on their grades.
Since the learners are adults, they have chosen themselves if they want to be a part of this study or not.
To avoid harming the participants' feelings, the researcher has explained in advance that the participants
can drop participation if they feel uncomfortable and that they can have access to the results of the study.

With the help of an Arabic translator (40% of B students were with Arabic L1) and a teacher of B level,
I instructed B level students for 60 minutes and then gave them 60 more minutes to ask for necessary
words and to write a story. Being multilingual, I actively helped other students with French, English,
Dari, and Persian L1. However, we could not equally support the translation of the students with
Tigrinya L1.

Limitation
Unfortunately, B-level student's Swedish was insufficient to write a story. With the help of their teachers
and translators, we provided them with related nouns and motion verbs such as en groda (a frog) and
ramlar ner (fall down). Both teachers and several students were consequently impressed by this type of
teaching method, but there were five students (out of 20) that did not write anything, not a sentence.
Their explanation was their old age. They expressed that it is tough for them to learn Swedish as L2

24
since they are too old to learn any new languages: "sorry, I cannot write anything; I am 65 years old".
So, for B-level students, the researcher had to adjust her planned study to the situation.

The second limitation of the present study is the small size of the sample. With 20 participants per group
and 40 participants in the total sample, I could not generalize the results to the population of SFI students
in Sweden. A larger study would be more efficient and could result in population estimates on the topic.

Additional Assisting Morphemes

Since students had no related and sufficient vocabularies to write a story, it was decided that the teacher
would provide Swedish words asked by students instead of providing dictionaries. Table 11 -Table 14
present the lists of words for each class which had been written on the whiteboard. It also gave the
opportunity to other students in the classroom to learn and use those words.

Table 11
The Words Requested by Learners and Provided by Teacher in C Level/ Day
Substantives Verbs Adjectives

Swedish English Swedish English Swedish English

en groda a frog ställer till make a mess busig naughty

en hjort a deer skäller burk

en uggla an owl smiter ut slip out / off

en fånge a prisoner märker notice / find

en bikupa a beehive letar efter searching/looking for

en stam a trunk flyg fly

ett husdjur a pet ramlar ner fall down

hoppar jump

Table 12
The Words Requested by Learners and Provided by Teacher in C Level/ Evening
Substantives Verbs Adjectives

Swedish English Swedish English Swedish English

en saga a story stoppar i stick in busig naughty

en berättelse a narration flyr fly förtvivlad desperate

en fantasi a fantasy följer follow högt high

25
 en stövel a boot ropar call, shout orolig worried

en groda a frog hoppar jump farlig dangerous

en vän a friend jagar chase ledsen sad

en säng a bed söker search ovänlig unfriendly

en glasburk a glass jar blir get / become rädd scared

en bikupa a beehive förstör destroy arg angry

en måne a moon ramla (ner) fall down

en toffla a slipper slår (ner) knock down

en uggla an owl biter bite

en sten a stone håller hold

en gren a branch går sönder break down

en pöl a puddle klättrar climb

en pall a stool attackerar attack

en klippa a cliff kastar av throw

en skog a forest luktar smell

en mullvad a mole lyfter upp lift upp

ett fönster a window hyssjar hush

ett husdjur a pet

ett rådjure a deer

ett hål a hole

Table 13
The Words Requested by Learners and Provided by Teacher in D Level/ Day
Substantives Verbs Adjectives

Swedish English Swedish English Swedish English

en groda a frog ramlar fall _ _

en uggla an owl går sönder destroy

en glasburk a glass jar

en bikupa a beehive

26
 en stövel a boot

ett rådjur a deer

ett träd a tree

Table 14
The Words Requested by Learners and Provided by Teacher in D Level/ Evening
Substantives Verbs Adjectives

Swedish English Swedish English Swedish English

en groda a frog ramlar ner fall down tung heavy

en vas a vase flyr escape arg angry

en burk a jar ropar call / shout högt high

en uggla an owl skriker scream orolig worried

en håla a hole farlig dangerous

en damm a dam

en mullvad a mole

en klippa a cliff

en bikupa a beehive

ett rådjur a deer

ett glas a glass

The narratives have been collected from 60 students of 6 classes (2 from level B, 2 from level C and 2
two from level D):10 students per each class. It needs to be mentioned that we asked all students to
fantasize about the pictures or about the story. However, B-level students didn’t write narratives but
copied the vocabularies from the whiteboard. Seven out of twenty (in both B levels) gave a name to the
characters and also started the story by tittle. For instance, En pojke som heter Soren (a boy named
Soren), en pojke (som) heter Wassim (a boy named Wassim) or det var en gång en pojke… (once upon
a time a boy…). The teacher wrote these sentences on the board, and it was remarkable that most of the
students in B level understood them and tried to read and write the sentences.

27
 5. Results and interpretations
Independent sample t-test
Descriptive Summary

In this secession, the morphemes written by SFI students were identified from the produced narratives
and processed via independent sample t-test. This means that the whole text length and 3 main word-
classes (verb, noun, and adjective) have been counted in different categories such as total number,
correct and incorrect use (wrong form). For instance, Table 15 illustrates a fragment of the dataset: the
correct and incorrect verbs (imperative, infinitive, present tense, past tense, perfect and future tenses)
for 10 students in level D1 (1 and 2 represent day and evening classes respectively). The numerical
result tables for the verb, nouns (definite and indefinite) and adjectives are presented in Appendix 1 and
2. In this study, the word correct means correct in conjugating of different word-classes.

Table 15
Dataset fragment
Verb
V.imperative

V.inco.imperative

V.Infinitive

V.inco.Infinitive

V.Present

V.inco.Present

V.inco.Past

V.inco.Perfect

V.inco.Future
V.Total

V.Correct

V.Past

V.Perfect

V.Future
Number

Lenght
Level

101 D1 152 26 24 0 0 2 0 3 1 19 1 0 0 0 0
102 D1 190 41 33 0 0 2 0 4 1 27 7 0 0 0 0
103 D1 248 48 29 3 0 1 4 15 7 10 8 0 0 0 0
104 D1 220 45 33 0 0 4 5 29 6 0 1 0 0 0 0
105 D1 255 51 51 0 0 5 1 0 0 46 0 0 0 0 0
106 D1 192 41 30 0 0 4 1 2 2 24 8 0 0 0 0
107 D1 257 44 29 0 0 0 2 0 3 25 10 4 0 0 0
108 D1 317 60 53 2 0 3 3 24 1 23 2 0 0 1 0
109 D1 102 16 11 0 0 0 3 10 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
110 D1 128 27 22 0 0 5 1 12 3 5 0 0 0 0 0
201 D2 70 11 9 0 0 0 1 0 0 9 1 0 0 0 0
202 D2 179 30 13 0 1 0 1 3 2 9 12 1 1 0 0
The first variable reports the length of each narrative. Figure 3 presents the average of the total length
203 D2 361 89 88 1 0 23 0 17 1 42 0 4 0 1 0
204 D2 187 38 28 1 0 5 1 6 0 15 8 1 1 0 0

of the texts per each class. Level C1 and C2 have 135 words on average and level D1 and D2 have over
205
206
D2
D2
337
214
69
40
57
27
3
0
0
0
6
2
5
1
20
1
2
1
25
24
5
7
2
0
0
4
1
0
0
0
207 D2 201 40 26 0 0 1 5 4 2 20 6 0 1 1 0
200 words on average. Figure 3 suggests that D level students maintain larger numbers of words or
208 D2 275 57 42 2 0 6 0 15 10 14 0 4 5 1 0
209 D2 243 48 43 0 0 7 3 27 2 5 0 3 0 1 0

morphemes.
210
301
D2
C1
254
147
45
24
39
23
1
0
1
0
4
1
0
1
6
3
0
0
28
19
5
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
302 C1 90 19 16 0 0 1 2 1 1 14 0 0 0 0 0
303 C1 266 55 54 0 0 11 0 1 0 39 0 3 1 0 1
304 C1 148 30 27 0 0 4 1 16 2 6 0 0 0 1 0
305
306
C1
C1 Average of total length of text
93
126
17
23
15
21
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2
13
0
0
0
1
21
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
307
308
C1
C1 per class
135
162
26
28
25
27
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
23
0
1
24
4
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
309 C1 106 21 20 0 0 3 0 6 0 11 1 0 0 0 0
300
310 C1 121 21 20 0 0
232,1 2 1 17 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
401 C2 233 43 40 206,1 0 0 2 1 1 0 36 2 1 0 0 0
200
402 C2 139,4
132 23
133,3 13 0 0 1 6 12 3 0 0 0 1 0 0
403 C2 117 28 12 0 0 0 15 8 1 4 0 0 0 0 0
100
404 C2 155 33 25 0 0 5 Total 6 12 1 8 0 0 1 0 0
405 C2 92 26 13 0 0 1 12 10 1 2 0 0 0 0 0
406 0
C2 190 35 30 0 0 3 0 1 0 26 5 0 0 0 0
407 C2 106 22 20 0 0 0 2 3 0 17 0 0 0 0 0
408 C2 C1
122 26 C2 25 D1
0 0 D2 0 1 11 0 14 0 0 0 0 0
409 C2 88 17 15 0 0 0 1 5 1 10 0 0 0 0 0
Figure 3. Average total length of narratives per class
410 C2 98 20 18 0 0 2 2 12 0 4 0 0 0 0 0

28
Figure 4 illustrates the average number of used verb tenses per class. The bar chart shows the advantage
of students in D level over students in C Level. Both figures 4 and 5 suggest that there is no difference
between D1 and D2 or between C1 and C2 classes.

Figure 5 also shows similar trends of using verb tenses across the classes. The past tense was used the
most, present tense -- the second most, and infinitive – the least. It needs to be noted that in both groups,
C and D, some students asked teachers about the correction of the past tenses but not present tenses
since they knew the present tense form of the verbs or they had them written on the board. (see Table
11 -Table 14)

Figure 4. The average numbers of verbs in correct tense per class

A similar graph was built for nouns. Figure 5 shows the average numbers of correct nouns in Indefinite,
Definite and Plural forms. The nouns in indefinite and plural forms follow the same pattern as verb
tenses do in Figure 4. There is a visible difference between levels C and D. The use of definite nouns,
on the other hand, follows an opposite pattern with C level using more nouns than D level.
The last word class that was analyzed is adjectives. In Figure 7 two columns are presented. The first
column is the average of total number (correct and incorrect) adjectives and the second one is the only
average of correct adjectives per class. The graph shows that students in the C level used more adjectives
than students at the D level.

29
Figure 5. Average number of correct nouns per class

Figure 6. Average number of adjectives per class

Although four classes participated in the study, the research is focused on a comparison of two groups:
level D and C, with two classes per level, a day-class, and an evening class. The further charts present a
comparison only between two groups: level D and level C.

30
Figure 7. Average of total length of narratives per group level.

The preliminary result is from the first category which is the length of narratives. The difference between
the average length of text of groups C and D is 83 words (Figure 7). Figure 8 shows the greater average
numbers of verbs, nouns, and adjectives written by group D as opposed to group C.

Figure 8. Average numbers of of verbs, nouns and adjectives the groups

31
Figure 9. Average numbers of definite, indefinite and plural nouns per group C and D.

Further, the same bar chart for an average of verb tenses between two groups is plotted (Figure 10). The
trend is similar to previous charts. Another result that can be inferred from the chart the difference
between verb tenses that students used in context. The most used verb tense is past, the reason might be
that they tell a story that potentially happened in the past. Second and third verb tenses are present and
infinitive.

There is another word type which has a contradicting trend which is adjective. As shown in Figure 11
adjectives in total and correct form have a higher average in Level C than level D, this difference will
be discussed later.

Figure 10. The average number of correct verb tenses per class

32
Figure 11. Average of total numbers of total adjectives and correct adjectives per group C and D.

Independent Samples T-tests

Descriptive statistics of the results of the study suggested that group D showed better writing skills than
group C. The aim for Independent Samples T-tests was to examine whether there is a statistically
significant difference on 26 variables between C-Level SFI students and D-Level SFI students with D-
group performing better than C-group.

The research hypothesis for independent samples t-test was:

Swedish writing skills of the D-Level group are better than the skills of the C-Level
group.

The null-hypothesis was:

Swedish writing skills of the D-Level group are not better than the skills of the C-Level
group.

The descriptive statistics for all 26 variables are presented in Table 16 and Table 17.

33
Table 16
Descriptive Statistics on Focus Variables for Group D and group C

34
Table 17
Descriptive Statistics on Focus Variables for Group D and group C (continued)

Independent Samples T-tests compares the means of two groups. The aim to do this T-test is to know
whether there is a statistically significant difference on 26 writing skills between C-Level SFI students
and D-Level SFI students. The SPSS application subtracted the average number on each variable for
Level C from the average number on the same variable for Level D. For example, 219.1 - 136.35 for
Length. The result is 82.75 (see the Mean Difference Column). Although we can do this simple
calculation by hand and have it on the bar-chart for length for two levels, we cannot say whether the
difference is significant. Therefore, we need a t-test.

35
Table 18 reports the results of the independent samples t-test on 26 measured variables. The orange-
colored variable in t-test have not significant mean value difference and the blue colored are significant.
Independent Sample T-test for 26 variables of the study. Six variables highlighted in blue showed
support for rejecting the null hypothesis.

Green highlight in Sig. (2-tailed) column identifies statistically significant differences between C and D
levels on the given variable. Blue highlight on Mean Difference column identifies statistically
significant differences between C and D levels with D level showing better results on the given variable
(in accordance with the research hypothesis).

On the statistically significant but inverted difference of “A. Correct” variable see pp. 37 and 38 of the
manuscript. Three significant results on incorrect words (red in blue) were not reported since they are
expectedly positively linearly related to the results on total and correct words: as more a learner writes
new words, as more mistakes, he/she is likely to do.

As a result of the independent sample t-test with a robust alpha-level of .025: sixteen variables out of 26
did not show statistically significant differences between two groups: I failed to reject the null hypothesis
and concluded that there is no difference between two groups on the following skills: V.inco.imperative,
V.Infinitive, V.inco.Infinitive, V.Present; V.Past; V.Perfect; V.inco.Perfec, V.inco.Future, N.Total,
N.Definite, N.inco.Definite, N.Plural, N.inco.Plural, A.Total, A.Incorrect, PLevel (see Table 18 and
Appendix 8).

On seven variables the t-test revealed significant differences (see Sig. 2-tailed column <0.05), and the
null-hypotheses of equality of means between two groups were rejected.

On average, the students of D Level wrote longer texts (M = 219.1, SE = 16.66) than the students of C
Level (M = 136.35, SE = 10.62). This difference is significant t(38) = 4.19, p < .025, and represented a
large-sized effect r = .56.

On average, the students of D Level wrote more verbs, correct and incorrect in total, (M = 34.35, SE =
4.08) than the students of C Level (M = 26.85, SE = 2.06). This difference is significant t(38) = 3.7, p <
.025, and represented a large-sized effect r = .51.

On average, the students of D Level wrote more correct verbs (M = 34.35, SE = 4.08) than the students
of C Level (M = 22.95, SE = 2.23). This difference is significant t (38) = 2.45, p < .025, and represented
a medium-sized effect r = .37.

36
On average, the students of D Level wrote more imperative verbs (M = 0.65, SE = 0.23) than the students
of C Level (M = 0, SE = 0). This difference is significant t (19) =2.8, p < .025, and represented a large-
sized effect r = .54.

On average, the students of D Level wrote more verbs (M =, SE =) than the students of C Level (M =,
SE =). This difference is significant t(38) =, p < .025, and represented a large-sized effect r = .51.

Table 18
Statistically Significant Results of Independent Sample Test with Effect Sizes

*EVA: Equal variances assumed

**EVNA: Equal variances not assumed

37
On average, the students of D Level wrote more correct verbs in future tense (M =0.3, SE = 0.11) than
the students of C Level (M = 0.05, SE = 0.05). This difference is significant t(27.18) = 2.15, p < .025,
and represented a medium-sized effect r = .38.

On average, the students of D Level wrote more correct indefinite nouns (M = 10.4, SE = 0.94) than the
students of C Level (M = 7.5, SE = 0.64). This difference is significant t(38) = 2.56, p < .025, and
represented a medium-sized effect r = .38.

On average, the students of D Level wrote less correct adjectives (M = 2.55, SE = 0.62) than the students
of C Level (M =5.4, SE = 1.08). This difference is significant t(38) = -2.3, p < .025, and represented a
medium-sized effect r = .43.

"A. Correct" that is (Adjective-correct) variable shows a negative Mean Difference (smaller than zero).
On this variable, Level C students on average did significantly better than Level D students which fail
to reject null-hypothesis. The reason might be such that the C-Level students asked teachers for more
adjectives and teachers (see Table 12) provided the adjectives in correct forms and the learners used
them in their narratives. While D-student used their own vocabularies and had to conjugate adjectives
on their own.

The 'Mean Difference' column says what is the average difference between two groups on every
variable. I questioned SPSS to subtract Level C average means from Level D average means because
our hypothesis was that Level D students will do better on all measurements and their results will be
greater than the results of Level C students.

I calculated the r-values for effect sizes (see Table 18) using t-values and degrees of freedom produced
by SPSS. According to Field (2009, p. 332), the formula is:

Cohen’s criteria for effect sizes: the threshold for a medium effect is around 0.3; the threshold for a large
effect is around 0.5 (Field, 2009, p.57);
As Table 18 shows, the effect sizes for 3 significant variables on Length, V.Total, and V.imperative are
large and medium. For V.Correct, V.Future, and N.Indefinite variables, two SFI Levels differ
significantly with a medium effect size.

Finally, on the basis of the results of independent-sample t-tests, we can reject the null-hypothesis on 6
important variables and state that, on average, D-Level students have statistically significantly better
writing skills than C-Level students. This result allows proceeding to the next part of the research, which
is the application of PT to SFI levels C and D.

38
Application of Pienemann model
To analyze the learner’s narratives, I adopted the hierarchy of processing procedure (Pienemann &
Håkansson 1999) which has been shown in Table 7

Table 19
Svenska Processbarhetsnivåer (Håkansson, 2004, p.154 of Pienemann & Håkansson,1999)
Underliggande Exempel från svensk
Nivå Exempel från svensk syntax
procedur morfology

Grammatisk information

Nivå mellan satser. Skillnad

5 mellan
Negationen efter verbet i
huvud-och bisats huvudsats och före verbet i bisats

Nivå Grammatisk information

4 mellan fraser Predikative kongruens Rak och omvänd ordföljd

Nivå Grammatisk information Initialplacerat adverbial/ object

3 inom fraser Attributiv kongruens och rak ordföljd

Nivå
Ordklass, lexical Suffix för plural, Kanonisk ordföljd (oftast agent
2
morfologi presens, preteritum före handling/subjekt före verb)

Nivå
1 Enstaka ord Oböjda former Enstaka konstituenter

Håkansson 2004, describes the different levels of Swedish processability which has been illustrated in
Table 19. Her description of different levels has been translated from Swedish to English hence the
examples have been provided by me (Håkansson, 2004, p. 153-156).

The first level is the same for all languages, namely that you have to learn words before you start using
grammatical rules. Thus, the words are first perceived as invariant units. That is there is no switching
between different curved forms for example (dog, dogs).

The second level means that the learner can process word classes with appropriate inflections. This is
necessary since according to Levent (1989) words are stored in the dictionary together with information
about the syntactic and morphological properties of the word-classes. Which means that verbs have
properties other than nouns. The learner at this level (level 2) begins to develop the words with lexical
morphology. For instance, the Swedish learner gives substantive ending for plural like (skolor / schools)
and ending for a verb like (pratar, pratade). In Swedish language, there are several endings for plural (-

39
or, -ar, -n, -0) there is so common if the Swedish learner overuse some common endings for instance,
(grodar instead of grodor).

At the third level, the morphology is developed to apply congruency morphology within the phrase. This
means that the Swedish learner is able to process larger units than phrases and mark that there is
grammatical information between two words in one phrase. For instance,

en grön groda / A green frog

två grön-a grod-or / two green frogs

Additionally, at this level, the learner has prerequisites of using V2 sequence, i.e. straight-word order
when the subject is in the first place in a sentence (Jag pratar nu / I speak now) and revers word-order
when something else comes first in the sentence (Nu pratar jag / now speak I). the location of the Verb
in Swedish is always in the second place:

SVO => Subject + Verb + Object

OVS => Object + Verb + Subject

According to Swedish grammatical rules, now, the learner has an overview of the whole sentence and
can transfer grammatical information between subject and predicate parts.

At the fourth level, the learner has the ability to use the reversed word order, not always however
sometimes or possibly he/she cannot recognize between the principal clauses (huvudsats) and
subordinate clauses (bisats).

Level five represents another step forward which means not only to process grammatical information
between words and phrases but also between sentences. In Swedish grammar, there are differences
between principal clauses and subordinate clauses. This level is the final level/ step in the development
of the Swedish syntactic rules. The Pienemann model is been implemented to find the students’ level in
the PT hierarchy. The model is based on 5 levels (Table 7). In this study, each students’ narratives are
evaluated and placed in one of the 5th levels.

40
 Students level based on Pienemann
15
12
10 1
10 8
6 2
5 3
2 2
4
-
Level C Level D

Figure 12. The student’s narratives level according to Pienemann model

Figure 12 shows a comparison of the result between C and D level students in different classes. The
general view of the graph shows C classes are in level 1,2,3 which level 2 is the most on (12 students)
and D classes are in level 2,3,4 which level 2 has the highest number (10 students). There is no narrative
that belongs to level 5.

Students level based on Pienemann per class

8 7
6 6
6 5
4 1
4 3 3
2 2 2 2
2 3
- 4
C1 C2 D1 D2
Level C Level D

Figure 13. The student’s narratives level according to Pienemann model per each class

The Pienemann model also is presented per each class. Figure 13 shows that D2 class has a higher level
than D1 and also C1 class students have a higher level than C2 class. It is significant that there is a small
difference between C1 and D1 levels.

Morphological analyses

The students’ written stories have been revealed some errors which are related to SLA theories of
Selinker and L2 developing grammar learning of Pienemann. The assumptions about managing and
activating the latent language structure has been found in a story, written by an L2 learner who is a
researcher and living in Sweden for 5 years Her Swedish interaction is with her family, her colleagues,
her friends and during shopping. She has been achieved level 4 in Pienemann processability hierarchy.

41
Here is a paragraph from her story/ narrative:

“Helt plötsligt kommer en uggla ut från trädet och nu är det den överraskande Toby
(pojken) som faller ner. Samtidigt inser Sally (hunden) att det är kanske inte så roligt
att leka med bin och försöker fly från dem.”

English translation:

” Suddenly, an owl comes out of the tree and now it is surprising Toby (the boy) who
falls down. At the same time, Sally (the dog) realizes that playing with bees may not
be so funny and try to escape from them.”

This paragraph has been indicated that this L2 learner (in D-level) passed all the requirements of level
4 in the PT hierarchy and she is ready to transfer to the next step (Level 5). Additionally, there have
been some narratives in D-level which have passed the requirements of PT nevertheless, unfortunately,
they did not have coherency and they were difficult to understand the entirety of them.

For instance:

“Bikupan gick nere hunden fortfarande tyckte grodan var där till bi trakasserat efter
hunden. Under tiden Tim var trakasserat från en mullvad och gick upp i träden.”

English translation:

” The hive went down the dog still thought the frog was there to bee harassed after the
dog. Meanwhile Tim was harassed from a mole and went up in the trees."

In this paragraph, the conjugating of the verbs tyckte (thought), gick (went), var (was) and trakasserat
(harassing) and nouns bikupan (the beehive), hunden (the dog) and grodan (the frog) are correct but the
whole paragraph did not have coherency and relevancy to understand. Therefore, according to PT and
the correct conjugating of verbs and nouns, this student has been placed in the second level of the
processing procedure hierarchy.

Since the focus of this study is not going beyond discourse analyses, I have been exemplified different
writing errors/ mistakes made by SFI learners in both groups C and D levels. Afterward, based on these
mistakes/ errors I put them in different levels of PT hierarchy. (see Table 7 for English and 19 for
Swedish)

42
Group D
This group of students, who are attending the last level of SFI, are familiar with single words, uninflected
forms of a word and single constituents so they pass the first level of PT. Some learners cannot pass all
the requirements of a level thus I put them in PT hierarchy according to their errors/mistakes.

Level two requirements are: knowing the word class, lexical morphology, the suffix for plural, present
tens of verb and past tense of a verb. They must recognize the canonical order (usually agent before
action/subject before the verb) which means the normal order of sentences in Swedish

(SVO => Subject + Verb + Object)

Figure 12 has been illustrated that 10 students out of 20 achieved level 2 of PT hierarchy.

ð Bi blivit ärga och gick alla ute bikupan.

(Bees have been angry, and all went out the beehive.)
a. Ärga is an adjective in plural form, so Bi as a noun has to be conjugated in plural
form, Bin;
b. The verb “blivit” cannot stand without har/hade in written form.

ð Per och Loto var sovit.

(Per and Loto were slept.)
• Using two verbs in one sentence.

ð Medan Benji lekade med en bikupa.

(While Benji was playing with a beehive.)
• An incorrect conjugation of verb leker (lekte). (see Table 4)

To pass level 3 of this hierarchy, a learner needs to show his/ her understanding of grammatical
information in phrases, attributive congruence for instance (en brun hund), initial situated
adverbial/object and the chronical /normal word order.

• Jag ser ett ärg uggla. (I see an angry owl.)

The correct dictation of angry is arg this learner uses the attributive adjective in correct place however
an owl in Swedish is en uggla this means that, when he/she by sudden use ett for the noun then the
adjective needs to be inflected excessively (argt) though it is incorrect.

• Plötsligt dem hårt (har hört) nånting bakom ett gammalt träd.
(Suddenly, they heard something (from) behind an old tree.)

43
The placement of the verb in Swedish language, is always in second place this means the Swedish
language has three-word order: 1. canonical word order (SVO), 2. adverb fronting (ADV) and 3.
Subject-verb inversion (INV) (Håkansson, Pienemann & Sayehly, 2002. p.252):

Normal word order: SVO => subject + verb + object

Rivers word order: OVS => subject + verb + subject

AVS => adjective /adverb + verb + subject

Level 4 requirements are: a learner needs to show the recognition of grammatical information between
phrases, the ability of conjugating predicative adjective (hundar är bruna) in normal sentence/ word
order and in reverse word order. I could not find any conjugating predicative adjective in D and C
levels.

ð Samtidigt inser Sally att det är kanske inte så roligt att leka med bin och försöker flyr ifrån dem.
(At the same time, Sally realizes that playing with bees might not be so funny and try to escape
from them.)
• This learner has the ability of covering some requirements of the fourth level however the
correct word order for this statement is:
ð Samtidigt inser Sally att det kanske är inte / kanske inte är så roligt att leka med bin och
försöker fly ifrån (från) dem.

Level 5 indicates that the learner needs to demonstrate his/ her ability of grammar information between
sentences and can identify the difference between the main clause and a subordinate clause, the learner
needs to use the negation after the verb in the main sentence and before the verb in the subordinate
clauses. Unfortunately, there were no students who has the ability to writing subordinate/ dependents
clauses (bisats) correctly in D level or in C level.

Group C
This group of SFI alike group D are familiar with single words, uninflected forms of a word and single
constituents which means they pass the first level of PT. It needs to be exemplified the errors/ mistakes
of C group learners which situated them in different levels of PT hierarchy.
Here I have written the sample of errors/mistakes for different levels of PT levels.

Level 2:

1. kom manga bi från det. (Plural form)

2. En rådjure ta hand och kastar honom. (ett rådjure)

44
 3. De är ropa. (2 verbs är and ropa)
4. Hunden är ramla. (2 verbs är and ramla)
Level 3:

1. De måste går till skogen efter grodan. (måste + infinitive => måste gå)
2. Den djupa hålen. (Det djupa hålet)
3. Sista problemet var dålig. (Sista problemet var dåligt)
Additionally, it needs to point out that in group C, there were no student who has belonged to level 4
and level 5 of the PT hierarchy.

Table 20
Mistakes / Errors Found in Narratives of D-level Daytime Class
D1 Pienemann Level Errors / mistakes
101 3 två besta vän

102 2 han mårde ärg/ skrikade (VG 4)

103 2 var sovade/ pojken ta hund och krama.

104 2 sin hund hjälpar/ två besta vän.

105 3 ett uggla

106 2 jag sökade om sig/ en rådjur

107 2 conjugating of nouns and verbs

108 3 de gå ut.

109 2 sedan den går ut på trädgården

110 2 Janus fallande på golv / en bee

Table 21
Mistakes / Errors Found in Narratives of D-level Evening Class
D2 Pienemann Level Errors / mistakes

201 3 var sovvit

202 2 gåkk ut, sovat, fikk,

203 4 see example number 6

204 3 att letar

205 4 på morgonen Kalle kollar att Rocker är borta.

206 2 springade/ skrikade / 4 times

45
 207 2 måste hitade / skulle jag att spelar

208 3 Plöstligt dem hört nånting...

209 3 ett ärg uggla

210 3 En liten hus.

Table 22
Mistakes / Errors Found in Narratives of C-level Daytime Class
C1 Pienemann Level Errors / mistakes

301 2 en ljud/ måste går

302 2 Efter lång dag Olof var mycket trot.

303 3 English words (other), kom till en stor träd

304 3 Farliga bier

305 2 binar (bin)

306 3 stiggde (stiger, steg)

307 2 de var sova

308 3 den djupa hålen

309 2 sedan vi gick till skogen/ en grön träd

310 2 en familjer i skogen

Table 23
Mistakes / Errors Found in Narratives of C-level Evening Class
C2 Pienemann Level Errors / mistakes

English transfer/ fell/ fortsättade (verb goup

401 3 4 which are irregular)

402 2 English transfer/ fruit

403 2 All the verbs are in infinitive form

English vocabulary/ De mår arg / De mår inte

404 2 prata.

405 1 Hund är ramla

406 2 Pojken sovade på nattet.

407 2 De söka många platser.

46
 408 3 De hoppade på vatten.

409 1 De sovar

410 2 Han börjar söker / En hund är luktar

Table 20 present some errors/ mistakes which have been written by each student. The most interesting
is more than 40% of learners have difficulty in conjugating Swedish irregular verbs which are in group
4. Some learners conjugate those irregular verbs by the instruction of verb group one. The rule for group
1 is to omit -ar and add -de at the end of the stem /root alike ramlar => ramlade. Hence this rule is not
complicated, then, the learner tries to use it for the unfamiliar verbs.

Occasionally they conjugate nouns, verbs and adjectives in the way that they are comfortable with, for
instance: Pojken och biar blird arg. That can be the result of fossilization. My interpretation is:

1. Conjugating Bi like bil. (Although it is ett bi but en bil)

2. The teacher did not mention the plural form of -ett words and

3. Subsequently, the teacher did not teach verb group 4 so the verb conjugated as blird instead of blev.

Perhaps the learner conjugates in this way to indicate that this verb is in the past tense.

English morphemes in the texts

These English morphemes can provide SFI learners to try to complete their sentences and express their
feelings which are the examples of interlanguage and likewise language transfer (see chapter 3);

ð Rock tycker om att spellar hide and seek.

ð Men förs, måste vi kolla om Rock lämnade några clues.
ð Kalle visste inte vad Roger menade till, han såg en stor cloud of arga bees.
ð De tittade in kep(s).
ð Han har lost sin groda.
ð Sedan hoppade Cheddar på träd med bikupa och den fell down.
ð Hund hittar fruit på träd.
ð De hittade other djurer.

47
 6. Discussion
The aim of the study was to investigate the written proficiency of different levels of SFI students at
different morphological learning levels. Writing about the word-less children’s book (frog-story)
adopted to measure the learner’s ability to conjugate verbs, nouns, and adjectives. In this study, I try to
link SFI levels of written proficiency to the levels of Pienemann hierarchy of language learning through
answering the research questions. To answer the research questions, I ran the independent sample t-test
(via SPSS application) to find any significant differences between C- group and D-group. The
independent samples t-test indicated that there are differences between the groups on 9 variables. A
single variable with a negative mean difference was "A. Correct" (Adjective-correct) due to the fact that
C-Level learners received greater assistance on adjectives for their narratives. Via t-test, the null
hypothesis was rejected on 9 variables. After having received statistical evidence that the D-level
students have better writing skills than C-level students I applied PT hierarchy to the C and D levels of
SFI. It has shown that 12 out of 20 students in the C-group and 10 out of 20 from D-group are situated
in the second level of the PT learning hierarchy (see Figure 12). Nevertheless, the comparison between
different classes indicate that C1 (C-group daytime) has 6 students in level 2 and 4 students in level 3,
C2 (C-group evening) has again 6 students in Level 2, 2 in level 3 and 2 in the first level of PT hierarchy.
D1 (D- group daytime) has 7 students in level 2 and 3 students in level 3 and the last class, D2 (D- group
evening) have 5 students in level 3 and 2 students in level 4 and 3 students in the second level of the PT
hierarchy learning procedure. The given study showed that Pienemann hierarchy is applicable to C and
D levels of SFI with C SFI level matching the second and third levels of PT; D SFI level matches the
third and fourth levels of PT.

7. Conclusion
Language is extremely necessary for our everyday lives (Bolander, 2016, p.10). It is not only important
to us as individuals but has a decisive role to develop knowledge, to create, preserve and protect different
cultures in different societies. We can think about pictures or images and we can think about words but
most of the information is unconsciously processed and produced in our brain (Bolander, 2016, p. 9).
The words are the fundamental tools for the language, they have been loaded in our minds with
knowledge, experiences, memories, and emotions.

Linnarud (1993) stated that many learners are inhibited by their fear of making errors since at school it
often leads to bad marks. But, as we have seen, errors may be a sign that learning is definitely happening.
Writing is a proper method to improve in a language, it should be used as a practice method. It should
be reminded that the TL learners can probably not produce a text like a native speaker of the same
language since the learner does not master the formal aspect of the language that is essential in writing.

48
Adults and children are different in learning TL in many ways. For instance, in normal situations,
children always reach a state of “complete” knowledge of their native language. In L2 acquisition (at
least, adult L2), not only “complete” knowledge not always attained, it is rarely, attained. Fossilization,
representing a non-TL stage, is frequently observed (Han, 2004; Long, 2007 mentioned in Gass &
Selinker, 2013, p.164).

This study illustrated that there are differences between different groups of SFI. Although these
differences are not large, they can have effect on the learning level of the students. It is usually expected
that a child has built up a vocabulary that includes between 8,000 and 10,000 words in L1 at the age of
school start. And it takes four years that most of the language rules have been dedicated to how we build
sentences (Skolverket, 2012d, p.112). This means that adult learners need to build up more vocabulary
to be skillful in not only writing proficiency but also in the other three skills.

Further, the study shows that Pienemann model can be applied to the writing skills of the students of C
and D levels of SFI. In this study, the SFI students’ narrative abilities, the numbers of morphemes
written, and students’ competences to conjugate and put in agreement three main word classes (verb,
noun, and adjective) were evaluated. Independent Samples T-test was used to confirm that writing
competences of advanced-level students are higher than writing competences of beginner-level students.
The analysis of the morphemes produced by the students revealed that beginner-level students
demonstrated the 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels of Pienemann model of processability hierarchy, while
advanced-level students demonstrated higher results at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels of the model.

Further study
For further study, the first suggestion is the comparison of two types of learning: day-groups versus
evening-groups. It would be very interesting as evening-group students are usually working students
while the day-group are non-working students. the difference between them is that evening-group
students are immersed in the Swedish language at their workplaces, while day-group students do not
have this benefit. I would expect evening-groups to do better in all learning objectives than day-groups
(with exception of intensive course) even though they get much less time to study, both in class and at
home.
The second suggestion is discourse analyses of the narratives to show how SFI students use the different
word classes in a sentence and how they express their feelings by looking at pictures or at picture
booklets.
Then I would like to recommend using picture booklets to teach Swedish in different levels of SFI since
it has been shown that adults are as much interested as children to tell and write a Frog-story.

49
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Appendices
Appendix 1 - Number of students, narratives’ length and total verbs
Verb

V.imperative

V.inco.imperative

V.Infinitive

V.inco.Infinitive

V.Present

V.inco.Present

V.inco.Past

V.inco.Perfect

V.inco.Future
V.Total

V.Correct

V.Past

V.Perfect

V.Future
Number

Lenght
Level

101 D1 152 26 24 0 0 2 0 3 1 19 1 0 0 0 0
102 D1 190 41 33 0 0 2 0 4 1 27 7 0 0 0 0
103 D1 248 48 29 3 0 1 4 15 7 10 8 0 0 0 0
104 D1 220 45 33 0 0 4 5 29 6 0 1 0 0 0 0
105 D1 255 51 51 0 0 5 1 0 0 46 0 0 0 0 0
106 D1 192 41 30 0 0 4 1 2 2 24 8 0 0 0 0
107 D1 257 44 29 0 0 0 2 0 3 25 10 4 0 0 0
108 D1 317 60 53 2 0 3 3 24 1 23 2 0 0 1 0
109 D1 102 16 11 0 0 0 3 10 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
110 D1 128 27 22 0 0 5 1 12 3 5 0 0 0 0 0
201 D2 70 11 9 0 0 0 1 0 0 9 1 0 0 0 0
202 D2 179 30 13 0 1 0 1 3 2 9 12 1 1 0 0
203 D2 361 89 88 1 0 23 0 17 1 42 0 4 0 1 0
204 D2 187 38 28 1 0 5 1 6 0 15 8 1 1 0 0
205 D2 337 69 57 3 0 6 5 20 2 25 5 2 0 1 0
206 D2 214 40 27 0 0 2 1 1 1 24 7 0 4 0 0
207 D2 201 40 26 0 0 1 5 4 2 20 6 0 1 1 0
208 D2 275 57 42 2 0 6 0 15 10 14 0 4 5 1 0
209 D2 243 48 43 0 0 7 3 27 2 5 0 3 0 1 0
210 D2 254 45 39 1 1 4 0 6 0 28 5 0 0 0 0
301 C1 147 24 23 0 0 1 1 3 0 19 0 0 0 0 0
302 C1 90 19 16 0 0 1 2 1 1 14 0 0 0 0 0
303 C1 266 55 54 0 0 11 0 1 0 39 0 3 1 0 1
304 C1 148 30 27 0 0 4 1 16 2 6 0 0 0 1 0
305 C1 93 17 15 0 0 0 1 13 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
306 C1 126 23 21 0 0 0 2 0 0 21 0 0 0 0 0
307 C1 135 26 25 0 0 0 0 1 0 24 1 0 0 0 0
308 C1 162 28 27 0 0 0 1 23 1 4 0 0 0 0 0
309 C1 106 21 20 0 0 3 0 6 0 11 1 0 0 0 0
310 C1 121 21 20 0 0 2 1 17 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
401 C2 233 43 40 0 0 2 1 1 0 36 2 1 0 0 0
402 C2 132 23 13 0 0 1 6 12 3 0 0 0 1 0 0
403 C2 117 28 12 0 0 0 15 8 1 4 0 0 0 0 0
404 C2 155 33 25 0 0 5 6 12 1 8 0 0 1 0 0
405 C2 92 26 13 0 0 1 12 10 1 2 0 0 0 0 0
406 C2 190 35 30 0 0 3 0 1 0 26 5 0 0 0 0
407 C2 106 22 20 0 0 0 2 3 0 17 0 0 0 0 0
408 C2 122 26 25 0 0 0 1 11 0 14 0 0 0 0 0
409 C2 88 17 15 0 0 0 1 5 1 10 0 0 0 0 0
410 C2 98 20 18 0 0 2 2 12 0 4 0 0 0 0 0

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Appendix 2 - Number of nouns and adjectives

Noun adjective
N.inco.Indefinite

N.inco.Definite

N.inco.Plural
N.Indefinite

A.Incorrect
N.Definite

A.Correct
N.Plural
N.Total

A.Total

26 9 3 12 2 0 0 1 1 0
25 8 2 11 3 1 0 4 3 1
55 9 9 14 23 0 0 0 0 0
47 5 5 19 15 1 2 1 0 1
50 15 2 25 7 1 0 4 0 4
29 12 4 8 3 1 0 7 3 4
47 11 3 8 24 1 0 4 1 3
47 15 8 17 3 4 0 5 4 1
28 5 0 16 0 0 0 2 1 1
27 7 2 11 7 0 0 2 2 0
12 4 1 3 4 0 0 3 2 1
55 4 3 28 14 4 1 0 0 0
57 10 2 32 7 4 0 11 11 0
41 13 1 12 15 0 0 1 1 0
28 19 1 5 3 1 1 7 6 1
42 14 0 21 0 0 0 6 6 0
29 12 3 4 1 0 1 2 2 0
31 10 0 12 0 1 0 5 5 0
28 10 7 7 4 1 0 3 3 0
40 16 0 16 0 0 0 1 0 1
26 8 2 12 2 3 2 3 2 1
13 5 0 7 0 0 1 3 3 0
43 10 0 16 8 0 4 14 13 1
37 13 2 17 1 3 1 20 20 0
26 4 1 19 1 0 1 3 3 0
29 7 2 21 0 0 0 8 8 0
32 8 2 20 2 0 0 7 5 2
42 10 0 31 2 0 0 4 4 0
19 7 3 9 0 0 0 5 4 1
26 9 2 11 3 0 1 1 1 0
69 14 3 48 3 2 1 11 11 0
38 2 31 5 0 1 1 12 6 6
28 7 10 7 4 0 0 1 1 0
22 7 4 7 2 1 1 6 6 0
15 7 2 3 3 0 0 2 2 0
48 8 2 35 2 0 1 7 6 1
32 5 0 21 4 2 0 7 7 0
28 6 3 7 9 1 2 5 5 0
29 5 4 9 8 3 0 1 0 1
22 8 8 6 0 0 0 1 1 0

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Appendix 3 - Students’ information
Personal information

Years in Sweden
Student number

Mother tongue

Swedish source
Occupation
Day/Eve.

Gender
Level

Age
101 D1 1 32 F Arabic 4 SFI Student 10
102 D1 1 44 F Chinese 0.8 SFI Student 4 & 10
103 D1 1 35 F Tamil 2 SFI Student 4 & 10
104 D1 1 35 F Portuguese 3 SFI Student 10
105 D1 1 32 F Urdu 6 SFI Student 10
106 D1 1 40 F Arabic 1.5 SFI Student 0
107 D1 1 34 F Tamil 1.5 SFI Student 3 & 10
108 D1 1 27 M Persian 1 SFI Student 3 & 10
109 D1 1 36 M Tigrinya 4 SFI Student 4&9
110 D1 1 30 M Arabic 1 SFI Student 4
201 D2 2 43 M Marathi 5 IT 2
202 D2 2 31 M Albanian 2 IT manager 1&2
203 D2 2 29 F Spanish 5 Researcher 1,2,3,5
204 D2 2 30 M Telugu 2 IT engineer 0
205 D2 2 41 M Spanish 6 Telecom 2&3
206 D2 2 27 F Albanian 3 Housekeeper 5 & 2
207 D2 2 28 F Bulgarian 2 Employed 2&3
208 D2 2 28 M Tamil 1 Student assistant
2
209 D2 2 32 M Persian 2.5 Economy assistans
2&5
210 D2 2 32 F Korean 1 Purchaser 1&3
301 C1 1 47 M Persian 1.5 SFI Student 5 & 10
302 C1 1 26 F Spanish 0.5 SFI student 3&5&7
303 C1 1 28 M Urdu 1 SFI student 3&5
304 C1 1 35 F Persian 3 SFI student 3
305 C1 1 36 F Greek 1.5 SFI student 1 & 10
306 C1 1 26 F Arabic 2 SFI student 3 & 5 & 10
307 C1 1 30 F Arabic 2.5 SFI student
308 C1 1 33 F Vietnamese 1 SFI student 10
309 C1 1 25 F Spanish 0.7 SFI student 5 & 10
310 C1 1 28 F Chinese 3 SFI Student 2&3
401 C2 2 27 M Russian 0.5 Software engineer
0
402 C2 2 33 M Lou 1.25 House keeper 2 & 5
403 C2 2 25 F Dari 1 House wife 10
404 C2 2 23 F Turkish 1.5 University student
10
405 C2 2 45 F Thai 1 _ _
406 C2 2 29 M Greek 3.5 Bioinformatic 2 & 5 & 7
407 C2 2 25 M Kannada (Indian) 1.7 University student
4 & 5 & 10
408 C2 2 28 F Tamil 0.8 Software engineer
3
409 C2 2 39 M Macedonian 3 Student 1&2
410 C2 2 32 M Indian 2 Self employed 2 & 5 & 10

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Appendix 4 - Frog where are you?

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68
69
70
71
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Appendix 5 - Personal inquiry

Vänligen skriv inte ditt namn. Processen med denna forskning är anonym.

(Please do not write your name, the process of this research is anonymous)

1.Ålder / age:

2. Kön / gender:

3. Modersmål / mother tongue:

4. antal år i sverige / Number of years in Sweden:

5. Yrke / occupation:

6. Vilken typ av svenska interaktion har du varje dag? (till exempel när du handlar, pratar med
vänner, pratar med grannar, prata med kollegor osv.)
What kind of Swedish interaction do you have every day? (for example, during shopping,
talking to friends, talking to neighbors, talking to colleagues, etc)

Tack för ditt samarbete / Thanks for your cooperation

Reyhaneh Tajgardoun

(Renée)

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Appendix 6 - Vocabularies and sentences provided by teacher for B-level
I. Det var en gång var det en pojke och sin hund. (Once upon a time it was a boy and his dog.)

II. pojken heter… han har en hund och en groda. (The boy calls... has a dog and a frog.)

1. Pojken och hunden tittar på grodan i glasburken. (The boy and the dog look at the frog in a glass
jar.)
2. For this picture, the teacher mentioned different motion verbs for instance “flyr (escape)
klättrar ut (climbs out), hoppar ut (jumps out) and går ut (go out).
Pojken sover med sin hund i sängen. (The boy sleeps with his dog in the bed.
Grodan klättrar ut från glasburken. (The frog climbs out from the glass jar).
3. De vaknar på morgonen. (They wake up in the morning.)
Grodan är borta. (The frog is gone.)

4. De letar efter grodan. (They look for the frog.)

5. Pojken öppnar fönstret. (The boy opens the window.)
Pojken och hunden ropar efter grodan. (The boy and dog shout for the frog.)
Hunden och pojken tittar ut. (The dog and the boy look outside.)
6. Hundens huvud är i glasburken. (The dog’s head is in the glass jar.)
7. Hunden ramlar ner på marken. (The dog falls down on the ground.
8. Pojken är ärg. (the boy is angry)
Glasburken går i sönder. (The glass jar breaks down.)

9. Vi ser skogen. (We see the wood/forest)

De går ut i skogen och ropar efter grodan. (They go out into the forest and shout for the frog.)
I trädet är ett hål. (In the tree there is a hole.)

10. Pojken tittar på märken. (The boy looks at the ground.)

Vi ser många bin. (We see many bees.)
Vi kan se en bikupa. (We can see a beehive.)
Hunden hoppar. (The dog jumps.)
11. Hunden skäller. (The dog barking.)
Hunden har det så roligt. (The dog has so much fun.)
Vi kan se en mullvad också. (We can see a mole too.)

12. Bikupan ramlar ner på marken. (The beehive falls on the ground.)

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 Bin flyger i väg. (Bees fly away.)
Pojken klättrar upp i träd. (The boy climbs up a tree.

13. Han ramlar på marken. (He falls down on the ground.)

Vi ser en uggla. (We can see an owl.)
Ugglan kommer ut från hålet. (The owl comes out of the hole.)
Bin flyger efter hunden. (Bin flies after the dog.)
Hunden springer. (The dog runs.)
14. Ugglan flyger efter pojken. (The owl flies for the boy.)
15. Han klättrar upp på ett berg. He climbs up a mountain.
Han ropar efter hunden och grodan. (He calls for the dog and the frog.)
16. Pojken ramlar på rådjuret horn. (The boy falls on the deer horn.)
17. Rådjuret är arg. (The deer is angry.)
Rådjuret och hunden springer. (The deer and the dog run.)
18. Rådjuret stoppar och dem ramlar ner. (The deer stops, and they fall down.)
19. Pojken och hunden ramlar i vattnet. (The boy and dog fall into the water.)
20. Hunden klättrar upp på pojkens huvud. (The dog climbs up on the boy's head.
21. Hunden simmar i vattnet. (The dog is swimming in the water.)
22. Pojken och hunden klättrar på ett trä. (The boy and the dog climbing a wood.)
23. De tittar på grodor. (They look at frogs.)
Grodorna är glada. (The frogs are happy.)
24. Pojken och hunden sitter. (The boy and the dog are sitting.)
Det finns många grodorna. (There are many frogs.)
De tittar på grodorna. (They look at the frogs.)
Alla är glada. (Everyone is happy.)
Pojken håller en groda i handen. (The boy holds a frog in his hand.)
Han vinkar till grodorna. (He waves hand to the frogs.)

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Appendix 7 - knowledge requirement for Writing skill for SFI
ENGELSKA

Swedish National Agency for Education

www.skolverket.se

Knowledge requirements
Writing skills
Course A

The pupil can, with support, understand clear, simple speech in concrete real-life, everyday situations.

Grade E Grade D Grade C Grade B Grade A

The student Grade D means The student Grade B means The student
understands that the knowledge understands that the knowledge understands
common words requirements for E simple phrases requirements for C coherent phrases
and simple and largely for C and sentences in and largely for A and sentences in
phrases in a brief are fulfilled. a brief retelling of are fulfilled. a brief retelling of
retelling of incidents in incidents in
incidents in everyday life, and everyday life, and
everyday life, and understands understands
understands adapted and clear adapted and clear
adapted and clear information that is information that is
information that is of interest to the of interest to the
of interest to the student. student.
student.
The student The student
The student demonstrates an demonstrates an
demonstrates an understanding of understanding of
understanding of simple and simple and
simple and commonly used commonly used
commonly used oral instructions by oral instructions by
oral instructions by acting on them in a acting on them in a
acting on them in a functional way. very functional
broadly way.
functional way.

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Course B

The student can understand clear, simple speech in common situations in everyday life.

Grade E Grade D Grade C Grade B Grade A

The student Grade D means The student Grade B means The student
demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an
understanding of a requirements for E understanding of a requirements for C understanding of a
brief retelling of and largely for C brief retelling of and largely for A brief retelling of
incidents, are fulfilled. incidents, are fulfilled. incidents,
conversations, conversations, conversations,
information and information and information and
adapted news on adapted news on adapted news on
very familiar very familiar very familiar
subjects by subjects by subjects by
providing a simple providing a simple providing a simple
summary of the summary of the summary of the
main content. main content and main content and
commenting on commenting on
The student essential details. essential details
demonstrates an and occasional
understanding of The student nuances.
short and clear oral demonstrates an
messages and understanding of The student
instructions in short and clear oral demonstrates an
everyday life by messages and understanding of
acting on them in a instructions in short and clear oral
broadly everyday life by messages and
functional way. acting on them in a instructions in
functional way. everyday life by
acting on them in a
very functional
way.

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Course C

The student can understand clear, simple speech in common situations in everyday, social, student
and working life.

Grade E Grade D Grade C Grade B Grade A

The student Grade D means The student Grade B means The student
demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an
understanding of a requirements for E understanding of a requirements for C understanding of a
retelling of and largely for C retelling of and largely for A retelling of
incidents, are fulfilled. incidents, are fulfilled. incidents,
descriptions, descriptions, descriptions,
conversations, conversations, conversations,
information and information and information and
news in brief on news in brief on news in brief on
familiar subjects by familiar subjects by familiar subjects by
providing a simple providing a simple providing a simple
summary of the summary of the summary of the
main content. main content and main content and
commenting on commenting on
The student essential details. essential details
demonstrates an and certain
understanding of The student nuances.
simple and clear demonstrates an
oral messages and understanding of The student
instructions by simple and clear demonstrates an
acting on them in a oral messages and understanding of
broadly instructions by simple and clear
functional way. acting on them in a oral messages and
functional way. instructions by
acting on them in a
very functional
way.

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Course D

The student can understand clear speech in informal and more formal situations in everyday, social,
student and working life.

Grade E Grade D Grade C Grade B Grade A

The student Grade D means The student Grade B means The student
demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an that the knowledge demonstrates an
understanding of requirements for E understanding of requirements for C understanding of
accounts, and largely for C accounts, and largely for A accounts,
descriptions, are fulfilled. descriptions, are fulfilled. descriptions,
conversations, conversations, conversations,
discussions, discussions, discussions,
information and information and information and
news on familiar news on familiar news on familiar
subjects by subjects by subjects by
providing a providing a providing a
summary of the summary of the summary of the
main content. main content and main content and
commenting on commenting on
The student essential details. essential details
demonstrates an and certain
understanding of The student nuances.
detailed and clear demonstrates an
oral instructions by understanding of The student
acting on them in a detailed and clear demonstrates an
broadly oral instructions by understanding of
functional way. acting on them in a detailed and clear
functional way oral instructions by
acting on them in a
very functional
way.

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Appendix 8 - Independent Sample Test with standard error and confidence intervals
t-test for Equality of Means
95% Conf.
Variable Levene's Test for Interval of
Sig.
Equality of Variances Difference
(2- Mean Std. Error
Effect size
F Sig. t df (r-value) tailed) Difference Difference Lower Upper
Length EVA 3.455 .071 4.189 38 0.56 .000 82.750 19.754 42.760 122.740
(large)
V.Total EVA 3.594 .066 3.698 38 0.51 .001 16.450 4.449 7.444 25.456
(large)
V.Correct EVA 4.049 .051 2.452 38 0.37 .019 11.400 4.650 1.987 20.813
(medium)
V.imperative EVA 43.278 .000
EVNA 2.795 19.000 0.54 .012 .650 .233 .163 1.137
(large)
V.inco.Present EVA 6.849 .013
EVNA 2.794 22.813 0.50 .010 1.700 .608 .441 2.959
(large)
V.inco.Past EVA 45.943 .000
EVNA 3.930 22.486 0.64 .001 3.600 .916 1.703 5.497
(large)
V.Future EVA 27.844 .000
EVNA 2.147 27.177 0.38 .041 .250 .116 .011 .489
(medium)
N.Indefinite EVA 3.501 .069 2.560 38 0.38 .015 2.900 1.133 .606 5.194
(medium)
N.inco.Definite EVA 16.773 .000
EVNA 2.926 18.291 0.56 .009 5.738 1.961 1.622 9.853
(large)
A.Correct EVA 2.431 .127 - 38 0.43 .027 -2.850 1.242 -5.363 -.337
2.296 (medium)

81