In the current study, 34 nine graders in a Swedish school were given a test where they would interpret sarcastic and ironic utterances from the American series Modern Family by explaining the implication in their own words. They were also asked to assess their own knowledge of English by filling out a questionnaire containing both qualitative and quantitative questions. The aims were to investigate whether the students understood the implications and if the total score could be connected to their own perception of their level of proficiency. The results show that although plenty of the students assessed themselves being highly comfortable with English as a foreign language, it did not result in a high understanding of sarcastic and ironic utterances. Out of 646 possible points, the students only reached a score of 156 in total. It was also clear that their self assessments did not comply with their results. While confident students received low scores, insecure students did well on the test.

The purpose with this study is to find out about teachers’ strategies and views on availability when it comes to the English subject for pupils with a different mother tongue than Swedish or English in Swedish schools. This study includes the views of five teachers who teach English in years 4-6. The background is focused on the fact that Swedish schools nowadays are multicultural, meaning that there are pupils from different countries. It is a common conception that this plays a significant role when it comes to pupils’ success in second-language learning, in this case the English language, since it is more difficult to learn a target language for pupils who are not proficient in the language which serves as a medium of teaching. Previous research seems to support this view, but it is currently not known exactly what the role of the pupils’ L1 is in L2-learning. This qualitative study is based on interviews that were conducted in five separate schools in two different municipalities. The results that we have gathered show that there are different views on how learning should be organized, including the most appropriate strategies for the case. Our results also show that these teachers are of the opinion that smaller teaching groups are to be preferred, but that the limited time together with limited resources have a negative impact on pupils’ learning in general.

This independent degree project investigates the vocabulary profiles in English language learning textbooks used in Sweden, and whether the vocabulary profiles follow the expected levels according to the CEFR and The Swedish National Agency for Education. This was done by a corpus-driven method, as well as a lexical analysis using search tools such as the English Vocabulary Profile, Text Inspector, and Compleat Lexical Tutor. The corpus contained texts from six different textbooks used in year 6, year 9, and in the English 7 course, as well as a number of news articles from The Guardian. The news articles served the purpose of comparing the vocabulary levels in the textbooks for English 7 with the vocabulary levels in advanced written English, which is a requirement for students to be able to understand in order to reach the grade E in English 7. The lexical analysis focused on lexical diversity, word families, word frequency, and the CEFR levels. The results showed that the vocabulary levels in the textbooks were appropriate, but that they might not provide enough challenge for students aiming for the higher grades. Results also showed that the vocabulary levels advanced in relation with the school years. The analysis revealed that between 90 and 97 percent of the vocabulary in the texts were categorized as within the CEFR levels that were expected of each of the school years. Pedagogical implictions drawn from this investigation are that teachers should teach about word families and that they can benefit from using the EVP when providing educational material in addition to textbooks.

This study explores the impact of a pedagogic intervention grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) designed to support language learners’ development of their English argumentative writing skills. The predominance of argumentative writing in school curricula and language assessment reflects the importance of helping language learners master this text-type in order for them to succeed in academic settings. This pedagogic intervention drew specifically on the Appraisal system of SFL to make explicit to students the interpersonal and evaluative language resources they can use to establish authoritative and intersubjective positioning as key means of achieving the overall purpose of argumentative texts. The study documents the impact of explicating to students appraisal resources during class instruction and helping them make more informed language choices as they engage with the information presented in their texts, and shape the interaction with their readers. The study drew on quantitative data stemming from students’ writing tasks and qualitative data in the form of reflection tasks and a research journal to explore the extent to which students’ understanding and use of different appraisal resources could be positively affected by the pedagogic intervention at the heart of this study. The analysis of the findings suggests that the intervention was successful in helping students familiarize themselves with and incorporate appraisal language to effectively convey their intended meaning in the composition of their argumentative texts. The findings also suggest that the teaching intervention contributed to students’ increased awareness of the range of lexicogrammatical choices available to them when they write as reflected in students’ skillful use of these resources in genre-specific ways. This included using appraisal resources to develop well-supported claims, in addition to establishing a critical authoritative position. Discussion of these findings focuses on the value of this type research on the pedagogic applications of the SFL framework as a way of advancing our understanding of how to better scaffold language learners and help them gain greater explicit control of the language resources necessary to successfully construct academic texts. As such, this study argues for the potential affordances of teaching pedagogies grounded in SFL theory in supporting language learners’ academic writing development. This study presents a case for the ability of SFL-informed pedagogies to empower students as writers by offering them new ways of looking at the writing process and using language to engage in advanced acts of meaning-making.

This study explores the possible relationship between extramural English (EE) and students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in the EFL classroom in the Swedish upper secondary school. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, and the data was collected through a questionnaire and interviews. The results of the study suggest that EE usage positively affects students’ language proficiency and their self-perceptions of their English ability, which in turn is beneficial for their WTC in all contexts inside the classroom. The results also show that the students who spend the most time in EE contexts reported higher levels of WTC than the non-frequent users of EE. Productive EE activities were also found to be more beneficial for raising students’ WTC than receptive activities. The connection between EE and WTC is, however, not absolute since a minority of the students reported a high frequency of EE but low WTC, which indicates that several other factors might also be influencing upper secondary school students' WTC.

It has been widely debated whether the use of the mother tongue is effective when learning a new language or if teachers should instead use the target language all the time in a language classroom. While some research shows that the use of the mother tongue is detrimental, other studies suggest that it can be used as a tool (e.g. for translations and for instructions) for teaching a new language. This study aims at exploring whether English or Swedish is predominantly used in English language teaching in Swedish primary schools and which factors contribute to the choice of language. Three primary school teachers and their pupils aged between 8 and10 at two primary schools in Sweden participated in the study. The data were collected through surveys and observations and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The findings show that the Swedish language is predominantly used during English lessons. Moreover, according to the participants in the study, this dominance is linked to the teachers´ need to create a positive classroom environment where the pupils feel safe, comfortable, and confident using their mother tongue as a tool for language learning.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka utmaningar som nyanlända elever i grundskolan kan stå inför i den ordinarie undervisning, samt hur de kan övervinna svårigheter i engelskämnet. Studien genomfördes bland elever i grundskolan i Södermanland. Två uppsättningar data användes: En med semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem elever från högstadiet, samt klassrumsobservationer av tre olika klasser under två olika tillfällen (på förmiddag och på eftermiddag). Uppgifterna analyserades med hjälp av en kvalitativ metod och med hjälp av Vygotskijs sociokulturella teori, vilken handlar om att lärande och kognitiva språkkunskaper sker i interaktion och samspel med andra genom dialog och stöttning av kunniga personer (Vygotskij, 2001). Resultaten visade att elevernas tidigare kunskaper i engelska och bristen på ordförråd påverkar deras engagemang under lektioner. Det visade också att elevernas modersmål (L1) och andra språkkunskaper (L2) kan används som resurs för att utveckla elevernas kognitiva språkkunskaper i engelska som ett främmandespråk (L3) med stöd och hjälp av alla aktörer (lärare, studiehandledare, klasskamrater och föräldrar).

This study investigates the potential benefits of reading strategy instruction in the English classroom in an L2 learner context. We examined the effects of reading strategy instruction on reading comprehension for L2 learners and investigated howreading strategies should be taught in the context of Swedish upper secondary school. To this end, six empirical studies were evaluated. We found that reading strategy instruction had a positive impact on reading comprehension in general, but that it was especially effective for certain student groups. Namely, intermediate learners benefitted more than other groups, while the weakest students improved the least in response to instruction. Furthermore, the research we examined suggests that it may be advantageous to focus on teaching a single strategy at a time. However, it is important to eventually expand students’ range ofstrategies long-term, since many pupils tend to over-rely on problem-solving strategies to the detriment of their progress in reading. Thus, emphasizing the less frequently used support strategies during instruction may help students read moreefficiently. Additionally, for reading strategies to best benefit learners, they should be taught in a clear, step-by-step manner. Finally, we argue that using aspects of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory to inform lesson plans would greatly benefit students, especially those who are less proficient. Due to the lack of research in the increasingly heterogeneous Western world, future research should investigate how reading strategy instruction behaves in a multicultural context in the West.

The increased use of online teaching during the year 2020 has highlighted that there is still a lack of knowledge on how the virtual classroom affects interacting and speaking. Therefore, this study focuses on answering the following two research questions: To what degree does online teaching support speaking and interaction in the classroom? Also, what strategies can teachers use to facilitate speaking and interacting better online? To answer the research questions, the author collected information from six different empirical studies in the field. One key result is that it is of high importance to increase the amount of interaction and communication between students in the Secondary School classroom. Furthermore, it is also highlighted that improving the design and structure can promote more purposeful interaction and communication between students and teachers. One implication of the study and for the field of research, in general, is that it only focuses on English as a second language and no other subjects. Another implication is that the study used only six empirical studies to collect the information which makes it difficult to generalise the results.

Both grammar and corrective feedback (CF) are important for second language acquisition, though they are not mentioned explicitly in the Swedish upper secondary school curriculum. Moreover, it is not clear which type of CF is most effective in grammar acquisition. This paper aims to consolidate, compare and contrast the findings of several articles examining the effect of CF on grammar acquisition. Two databases were used to find articles applicable to answering the research question. After excluding those that did not meet the criteria, nine articles were used in the end. Although the findings show that CF is effective for grammar acquisition in general, they do not show any type of CF to be superior to another. The factors identified as affecting the results of the studies are target structure, method, language proficiency and L1. Through the studies analyzed, it is not possible to establish the long-term effects of the various types of CF. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that oral meta-linguistic explanation (ME) is beneficial for teachers due to its time-efficiency. In conclusion, CF, being shown to facilitate grammar acquisition for L2 learners in general, has positive effects on English learning in the Swedish classroom. However, more research is needed in order to establish its effectiveness long-term and on a more detailed level.