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The purpose of this study was to examine if and in which cases Swedish students rely on their intuition when being confronted with English and how efficiently their language intuition, or sprachgefühl, functions. To study these questions a task was developed in which Swedish students of upper secondary level were asked to identify and correct various kinds of mistakes that were hidden in an English text. They were also asked to give an explanation for the changes they made, based on grammatical rules or feeling for linguistical correctness, to determine if they used their analytical capacity or their intuition in the process. The results showed that the students mainly relied on their intuition when making linguistical choices. Furthermore, the students were able to successfully solve the problems they identified in 77,5% of the cases they relied on their language intuition. However, they were still more successful, to be specific in 92% of the cases, when using their analytical system. This could either point to a lack of knowledge in grammar and deficient focus on teaching grammar in Swedish schools, or to the fact that language intuition is a dominant system in human language learning and should therefore be put in focus of language research. |
