Samanheng og samanfall : Ein studie av forholdet mellom opplæringsmål og utvikling av skriftlege ferdigheiter

Abstract

One distinctive feature of the Norwegian language situation is the existence of, and the compulsory teaching in the two mutually intelligible written varieties of Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk. The main goal of this thesis, "Correlation and causality. A study of the relationship between students’ first-choice written variety of Norwegian and the development of writing skills", is to develop new knowledge about the teaching of the two Norwegian written varieties from a student perspective.

The thesis is built around four sub-studies, which from different angles examine how writing skills develop over ten years of schooling. The data is collected and evaluated in collaboration with the national research project «Normprosjektet» (2012–2016), "Development of national standards for assessment of writing". A tool for teaching and learning, which examines student texts written between 6th and 10th grade. Through detailed studies of writing development, analyzes of teacher assessment, and student interviews, the four sub-studies try to find answers to the main problem: How does the first-choice written variety of students in elementary school, influence the development of writing competence in bokmål and nynorsk, and what implications may this competence have on the use of different linguistic varieties of written Norwegian?

The first sub-study is a literature review and launches the term «Monolingual Biliteracy» as descriptive of the Norwegian language situation. The second sub-study examines what preconditions students have for learning Bokmål or Nynorsk as their second-choice written variety. The third sub-study focuses on why students with Nynorsk as first-choice language find it difficult to distinguish between Bokmål and Nynorsk orthography, while sub-study 4 examines the language practices of a student who has switched first-choice language from Nynorsk to Bokmål, but who still occationally use Nynorsk and written dialect.

In the discussion, the findings from the four sub-studies are examined in light of theories of bilingualism and biliteracy. The different, but socio-culturally determined conditions for learning writing skills for Bokmål and Nynorsk students are discussed in the perspective of translanguaging, where active and early use of both written varieties is highlighted as a basis for successful education in the two Norwegian standards.