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The dissertation investigates oral communication from a language development perspective. The overall aim is to study the oral communication that is part of the learning process for Swedish as a subject and for vocational courses in the upper secondary schools. The focus is specifically on learning that incorporates reasoning and prepared speech.

The method used is derived from ethnography and Conversation Analysis. The material consists of fieldnotes, video and audio recordings of lessons from two different classes. The dissertation is theoretically linked to “New Literacy Studies”; the oral prac¬tices and oral cultures involved in the instruction of Swedish are described and viewed as part of school literacy. The concept ‘elaborated topic’ is used to analyse the extent to which students and teachers develop reasoning.

The results show that instruction in vocational training programmes can provide students with different conditions for oral language development. Students in the nursing programme took part in more varied communication than students in the technically/practically-oriented programme. The different oral cultures in the two classes could be described in terms of patterns for reasoning and prepared speech, knowledge ideology and power relations. The oral cultures of the classes investigated are reflected in the way they performed in the national test. The students’ ability to develop a sufficiently extensive line of reasoning for the test’s prepared speech did not correspond to how well they developed each topic of discus¬sion.

The dissertation emphasises the importance of dialogically organised instruction with students in every upper secondary programme being encour¬aged in their reasoning and prepared speech. It highlights language and communication in and of itself as important content in the instruction of Swedish. Finally, it argues that each subject is responsible for contributing to the language development of students.