Danish as a transit language for Icelanders into the Nordic region

Can Danish serve as a key to Swedish and Norwegian?

Abstract

This article describes a study of the vocabulary comprehension of Icelandic students in the 10th grade on texts written in Swedish. Results are compared with a similar study on vocabulary comprehension of the same text, written in Danish. finally, cases, understanding is based on the students’ self-assessment, they marked the individual words of the text according to whether they thought they understood a word, whether they were in doubt about the meaning of a word and finally whether they thought the word was incomprehensible.

Theories behind vocabulary comprehension in a foreign language are explained, what reasons may lie behind results other than expected, and what could be done to make it easier for students to transfer knowledge of one foreign language to another.

It also discusses the value of knowledge of the Nordic countries to Icelanders and the importance of taking international research and experience into account when publishing study materials and practices in foreign language classrooms in Icelandic schools.