The aim of this study is to investigate whether upper-secondary school students, studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in Sweden, prefer to learn from Native English speaking teachers (NEST) as opposed to Non-native English speaking teachers (NNEST). Furthermore, the present study seeks to identify, from the EFL learners’ perspective, why certain characteristics of both NNEST and NEST are felt to be more prestigious than others which in turn might affect the students’potential to acquire a desired identity.

This systematic literature review analyses nine research articles about formative assessment and feedback practices in the European EFL context. The aim is to explore previous research about how teachers and students in EFL education employ, process and experience feedback in both oral and written forms. The systematic literature review also highlights challenging areas of formative assessment practice in the research articles in order to offer a backdrop for prospective development of formative assessment procedures in the Swedish EFL context. The reviewed research covers formative assessment practices within the European EFL context of lower and upper secondary education in Sweden, Norway and The Czech Republic, Spain and Greece. The methods of the reviewed research articles included for example classroom observations, questionnaires, and interviews with teachers and students. The results of this systematic literature review indicate that the majority of the teachers in the research articles provided formative feedback which enhanced learning, but that feedback provision depended upon the schools’ assessment culture. The systematization also highlights the fact that teachers in some of the research articles were changing to a more formative assessment culture which promoted learning and peer assessment activities. Regarding challenging areas of formative assessment practices, the review showed that students might find feedback difficult to understand. However, the students improved their language skills if they were able to understand and given time to process the formative feedback on oral and written assignments. The literature review highlights that despite the strong promotion of formative assessment in Sweden, there is a gap in local empirical research showing how it happens. Thus, more empirical research about formative assessment in Sweden is needed.

Vocabulary is considered the building block of language. Without it, communication breaks down. This degree project investigates the vocabulary types, progression, lexical coverage andacademic words in EFL upper secondary textbooks in Sweden. This was done by a corpus-based approach using corpus tools such as Range and AntWord Profiler. The entire corpus contained six textbooks from two different series: Solid Gold and Viewpoints. These textbooks are utilised in English 5, 6, and 7 upper secondary courses. The analysis focused on Nation's word types and Coxhead’s Academic World List, including progression and coverage. The results revealed that high-frequency vocabulary is maintained throughout the series, while mid-frequency vocabulary considerably increases as the textbook levels progress. Results also show that around 3,000 word families are needed for 95% lexical coverage and 6,000 word families for 98% lexical coverage. Each textbook increases around 1,000 word families per level, but is less proportional in relation to the word count. The highest increase of word families is 32% and the lowest of 17%. Furthermore, the study found that the AWL covers 7% of the vocabulary, and 80% of the AWL items are used. Pedagogical recommendations from this study include establishing a vocabulary input threshold per level to ensure consistent progression. Additionally, academic written genres such as Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRaD) structures can be included in the textbooks in addition to the existing literary genres to help prepare Swedish L2 learners to cope with university academic texts.