Denise Bergström

Denise Bergström is PhD student in English and Education. She is a part of the doctoral school PROFS (Practice-based Educational Research) at the Department of Health, Education and Technology at Luleå University of Technology. Denise started her PhD studies in January 2019. 

Denise’s thesis project focuses on vocabulary development in the Swedish EFL classroom. Teaching materials as a tool for structured vocabulary development is of particular interest. The project encompasses three studies. The first study is an interview study with Swedish secondary school EFL teachers where their conceptualizations of vocabulary knowledge and development was is studied. The second study is an interview study with materials developers, focusing on what influences their vocabulary content decisions when producing EFL teaching materials. Teaching materials and their vocabulary input is the area of study in the third study. Denise has compiled a corpus encompassing five frequently used EFL teaching materials in Swedish secondary school in order to study the vocabulary input provided by the teaching materials in terms of, for instance, what words the teaching materials facilitate learning of and if students are provided with sufficient learning conditions (e.g., through recycling or focused vocabulary exercises).    

Denise also teaches English language courses and English courses within the teacher-training program.   

Denise is a member of the Swedish Association for the Study of English (SWESSE), the Swedish Association of Applied Linguistics (ASLA), British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) and Swedish Language Teachers' Association.