Browsing by Author "Forsberg, Marina"

Texts are all around us. Without being able to read (or write, for that matter) you cannot manage in today's society. Especially boys' poor reading motivation and abilities have been important issues along with recent PISA surveys. With the new Finnish curriculum, reading and literacy are given more space in teaching. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether putting effort on reading in schools can help students and especially boys become better readers. Earlier research has shown that by teaching students reading strategies, through book discussions and by supporting students in their multilingualism, motivation can increase. Through a narrow ethnographic study six boys in grade nine have participated to find out if they feel that support and book conversations have helped them in their Swedish. The results of this study suggest that book conversations in smaller groups are great help, but measures would be good to introduce as early as possible to achieve maximum benefit. All boys experienced themselves benefitting from the support measures.