Rakel Österberg teaches courses on Spanish and Romance languages at undergraduate and graduate level on second language acquisition and learning, Spanish linguistics and linguistics, Spanish grammar, mediation, academic writing and language education. She collaborates with colleagues who teach Spanish, both nationally and internationally. The students study Spanish in different programmes (interpretation and translation, the teacher training programme, Latin American studies). She also supervises degree projects and master dissertations.

 

 

Rakel Österberg  works with several lines of investigation in three main constellations of researchers:

- Studies of the educational setting of foreign languages with the TAL-project: Dr. Jonas Granfeldt (project leader, LU), Dr. Camilla Bardel (SU), Dr. Gudrun Erickson (GU), Dr. Susan Sayehli (SU) and Dr. Malin Ågren (LU). This project has finished but the team is still working ocn publications.

- Deeper studies of complexity in discourse and syntax in spoken language but in users at higher proficiency levels with the second team:  Dr. Fant and  Dr. Bartning (both SU) on data from the High-Level Proficiency in Second Language Use project (AAA).

- Academic writing among university students of Spanish in a research project entitled Spanish as a Heritage Language in Sweden. In this project, Österberg together with the colleagues, Alejandra Donoso (Linneaus University) and Enrique Sologuren (Universidad de los Ande-, Chiles) have studied, among other topics, the written production of students of various linguistic backgrounds: L2 Spanish learners (L1 Swedish), Heritage language speakers of Spanish (bilinguals in Swedish and Spanish since early childhood) and Spanish native speakers. Variables such as language contact, motivation to maintain and to learn Spanish and attendance to mother tongue instruction have been under the scope of this research.

The project Spanish as a Heritage Language in Sweden has led to the organization of two International Workshops at Stockholm University (2014 and 2019). The collaboration has also led to the participation in several international research conferences and symposia. As part of this project, a peer-reviewed chapter was published in the volume Multilingual contributions to writing research: Towards an equal academic Exchange (2021). Another paper, entitled Back to the Initial Condition: Experiences that trigger the need to develop language skills among university Spanish students has recently been published in Humanetten 48 (2022).

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Foreign language provision at secondary level in Sweden

  2010. Kenneth Hyltenstam, Rakel Österberg. Sociolinguistica 24, 85-100

  Article

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• The left and right periphery in native and non-native speech - A comparative study between French L1/L2, Spanish L1/L2 and Swedish L1

  2021. Lars Fant, Inge Bartning, Rakel Österberg. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 59 (1), 87-120

  Article

  High-proficient Swedish users of L2 French and Spanish were compared with native speakers of French, Spanish and Swedish with regard to how the syntactic peripheries in natural colloquial speech are structured. Two different though interrelated aspects were included: thus a cross-linguistic analysis comparing the three native speaker groups is combined with an analysis addressing the question of the upper limits of L2 acquisition. All left peripheral (LP) and right peripheral (RP) constituents of a corpus of 110,759 words were classified in a taxonomy relying both on syntactic and functional-pragmatic criteria. The cross-linguistic analysis showed that French and Spanish L1 speakers produced significantly longer LP sequences than the Swedish L1 speakers, who, in turn, put conspicuously more weight on the RP. Significant differences between the three languages were also found with regard to several LP and RP constituent categories. The L2 acquisition-oriented analysis showed that with few exceptions the high-proficient L2 users behaved like L1 users. Although a few interlanguage-related phenomena could be observed, no instances of any clear transfer from the speaker's L1 appeared in either L2 speaker group.

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• La périphérie gauche et droite dans la production des locuteurs natifs et non-natifs de français et chez les locuteurs natifs de suédois

  2020. Rakel Österberg. Scolia. Revue de linguistique 34, 71-95

  Article

  Les langues romanes, y compris le français, tendent à placer beaucoup d’informations dans la périphérie gauche tandis qu’en suédois la tendance semble aller dans le sens contraire (Morel & Danon-Boileau, 1998 ; Hancock, 2007; Conway, 2005 ; Fant, sous presse). Le premier objectif de la présente étude est de fournir un aperçu global de la taxinomie des constituants des périphéries gauche et droite en français et suédois L1, afin de permettre une analyse comparative. Le deuxième objectif est de comparer l’emploi en français L2 à celui du français L1. Les résultats montrent des différences importantes entre les patrons employés dans les périphéries syntaxiques en français et suédois. Les locuteurs suédois tendent à employer la périphérie droite beaucoup plus que les locuteurs de français L1. La situation s’inverse en ce qui concerne la périphérie gauche. Les locuteurs avancés de français L2 présentent des caractéristiques comparables à celles du français L1, sauf pour les périphéries gauches les plus complexes.

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• Learning, teaching and assessment of second foreign languages in Swedish lower secondary school – dilemmas and prospects

  2019. Camilla Bardel, Gudrun Erickson, Rakel Österberg. Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies 13 (1), 7-26

  Article

  This paper presents an overview of second foreign language (SFL) education in Sweden, especially at lower secondary level. It offers a survey of the historical development of the study of other languages than English as well as a reflection over the current state of the subject. Currently, there is a shortage of research on the circumstances and conditions of the learning, teaching and assessment of the Swedish school subject Modern languages, as well as on young people’s proficiency in other languages than English in Sweden. In order to contribute to a knowledge base for further research, the current paper reviews work considering the Swedish context concerning: a) frame factors, policy issues and organization of SFL studies b) attitudes towards plurilingualism and SFL motivation, c) teacher education and recruitment policies, and d) levels of attainment at the end of compulsory school. Throughout the paper, the European context is also taken into account. The paper ends with a discussion of the general status of the subject Modern languages in Swedish school and society, the fact that this subject is not mandatory, and the consistently high dropout rate that characterizes the current situation.

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• Muntlig språkfärdighet i främmande språk

  2019. Jonas Granfeldt (et al.). Resultatdialog 2019, 29-33

  Chapter

  De tre stora moderna språken i svensk skola –spanska, tyska och franska –erbjuds på en majoritet av grundskolorna, men det finns regionala skillnader både vad gäller skolornas utbud och elevernas språkval. Attityderna till moderna språk är positiva bland de rektorer, lärare och elever som deltagit i vårt projekt. När det gäller elevernas motivation att lära, vilja att tala eller oro för att tala språket i klassrummet såg vi inga tydliga skillnader i de tre språken. Att fritt kunna tala och samtala på språken är en kommunikativ färdighet som eleverna behöver få mer tillfälle att utveckla.

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• Special issue on Learning, teaching and assessment of second foreign languages in school contexts

  2019. Jonas Granfeldt (et al.). Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies 13 (1), 1-5

  Article

   The current special issue of Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies features a subset of the papers presented at the symposium Learning, teaching and assessment of second foreign languages in school contexts held at Lund University, Sweden, in December 2016. The symposium was organised by the TAL-project (Granfeldt et al., 2016), a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council and focusing on the learning, teaching and assessment of second foreign languages (SFLs) in Swedish schools1.

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• Causa y consecuencia en la producción escrita de aprendientes universitarios suecos de español

  2017. Aymé Pino Rodríguez, Rakel Österberg. Book of Abstracts, 59-61

  Conference

  This paper describes and analyzes most frequently used connectors expressing cause and consequence in argumentative texts produced by 12 Swedish university learner of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) with a level B1- C1 according to MCERL (2002) (Domínguez García 2007, Fuentes Rodríguez and Alcaide Lara 2007, Martí Sánchez 2008). The objective is to compare the frequency, use and function of the textual connectors used by Swedish SFL learners and learners whose heritage language is Spanish (SHL), that is, people who have grown up in a minority language community, surrounded by a society in which the majority language is another (Montrul 2010). Succesively, next purpose is to compare the obtained results to selected texts from two control groups of which one contains texts in Spanish L (Corpus CEDEL21, Lozano 2008) and the other one texts in Swedish produced by speakers of Swedish L1 (Corpus ARGUS2). For the analysis of the collected material, we combine corpus linguistics and contrastive analysis (Altenberg 2002a, 2002b, 2007, 2010, Biber 2007, Johansson 2007, 2009, Pino Rodríguez 2010). The purpose of this pilot study is to better specify the use of these connectors in order to elaborate a sequential didactic proposal for teaching-learning of Spanish university students. Although proficiency in writing and interpretation of academic texts is one of the objectives of Spanish in higher education in Sweden, the level of proficiency varies considerably in both the SFL student group and SLH students, who represent 25% of the Spanish students at Stockholm university (Arencibia-Aguilera 2008, Valdés 2005).

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• El uso del conector entonces en la escritura académica por aprendientes suecos de español como lengua extranjera y de español como lengua de herencia

  2017. Aymé Pino Rodríguez, Rakel Österberg. El uso del conector entonces en la escritura académica por aprendientes suecos de español como lengua extranjera y de español como lengua de herencia

  Conference

  La presente comunicación describe y analiza el uso y frecuencia del conector entonces/då en 16 textos académicos producidos por aprendientes suecos de español como lengua extranjera y de español como lengua de herencia, de nivel de conocimiento B1- C1 según la escala del Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las Lenguas (MCERL). Los resultados obtenidos se comparan con un número similar de textos extraídos de dos corpus de control: un corpus de aprendientes hispanohablantes y otro de nativos suecos. El estudio aporta nuevos conocimientos acerca de las características de la escritura académica en español de nativos suecos y estudiantes que tienen el español como lengua de herencia. Los textos argumentativos forman parte del Corpus denominado SUELE (Suecos aprendientes de español como lengua extranjera, nivel avanzado) y SUELH (Suecos aprendientes de español lengua de herencia, nivel avanzado) una compilación de textos electrónicos de lengua escrita de aprendientes de lengua extranjera y lengua de herencia de la Universidad de Estocolmo.

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• Det andra främmande språket i svensk skola

  2016. Rakel Österberg, Camilla Bardel. Tredjespråksinlärning, 13-28

  Chapter

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Show all publications by Rakel Österberg at Stockholm University