In accordance with the governing documents of the Swedish upper secondary school, critical thinking must be promoted in all subjects. A great responsibility rests on the teachers to include this in their teaching. However, there is no clear definition of what is meant by critical thinking, which previous research has shown creates problems in the promotion of it. This study investigates how teachers in the Swedish upper secondary school (1) perceive and understand the concept of critical thinking, (2) implement it in their teaching and (3) answer to challenges they encounter in promoting it. Data were collected through a questionnaire and interviews. Thereafter, the data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that teachers highly value critical thinking and see it as an essential part of participation in society. It was also found that the teachers have different ways of implementing and encouraging critical thinking in the classroom but that dialogic methods are a common denominator. Moreover, the results show that students' lack of language skills as well as teachers' uncertainty about the concept of critical thinking impact the prerequisites of the promotion of critical thinking. On this basis, it is recommended that teachers work on their own definition and concept understanding of critical thinking for challenges that arise in their own teaching. Due to the size and design of this study, more research is needed to better understand English teachers' experiences with critical thinking in Swedish upper secondary education.

This study aims to investigate how English teachers in Sweden use fictional movies and TV series in their classrooms, in order to discover the potential they can have for students’ language proficiency, literacy, and cultural knowledge. The data is collected through a questionnaire distributed to 65 teachers in lower- and upper-secondary school, and secondary adult education. In the questionnaire the teachers are asked about their general habits in using fictional movies and TV series, such as how often they use them and whether they involve their students in the choosing of movies and TV series or not. Furthermore, the 65 respondents are asked what factors they take into consideration when choosing a movie or TV series, how they relate the viewing to the syllabus, what areas of language proficiency they most often address through the viewing, how they introduce the viewing to their students, and what intentional and accidental purposes they believe movies and TV series can serve. The results show that most teachers use fictional movies to a greater extent than fictional TV series. Furthermore, the results show that most teachers provide clear aims to their viewing of movies and TV series, as well as having clear connections to the different syllabuses. It is also evident that teachers see movies and TV series as a valuable resource when developing their students’ language proficiency, literacy, and cultural knowledge.

The aim of the present study was to give a systematic overview of research literature on how bilingual and plurilingual EFL learners at secondary and tertiary education acquire/learn English. By searching three databases, nine peer-reviewed articles were chosen, categorised and analysed. The results indicated that multilinguals use learning strategies, as well as using certain languages for different contexts and tasks. Proficiency might also affect when their languages were used, since proficiency influenced learning strategies. To improve the Swedish EFL education for multilinguals, teachers need to help their pupils to become aware of their own learning by reflecting and thinking about their language production. Teachers need to provide instructions to pupils of how to improve their metacognition, thus becoming more autonomous learners. For multilinguals to achieve this, translanguaging is an important part of EFL education. This means that the teacher-education also needs to educate teachers on how to instruct others in metacognition and other learning strategies. Further investigations concerning both the teachers’ perspective and additional research into multilinguals’ EFL learning are needed.

The aims of the present study were to explore how teachers in upper-secondary school choose and use literary texts and genres in their teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL), what their attitudes are towards the role of literature in reaching the learning objectives and what implications their textual choices have for  literature teaching in general. Six people participated in the study, three male and three female upper-secondary school teachers in Sweden with English as one of their main subjects. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with questions focusing on how the teachers use literary texts in order to teach English in the courses English 5, 6 and 7. The data were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The identified themes were teachers’ general attitudes to literature teaching, learning objectives taught implicitly through literature and teachers’ basis for literary choices. The main conclusions drawn from this study were that in most of these cases, factors such as relatability and degree of intelligible input overrode canonicity in EFL literature teaching.

Denna litteraturstudie belyser forskning kring olika multimodala material inom engelskundervisning med fokus på barn och ungdomar. Enligt studiens problemformulering, behövs metoder för att ge stöd till en komplicerad språkinlärningsprocess, bidra till elevers motivation samt skapa anpassning för elevers skilda behov vid inlärning i engelskämnet. Litteraturstudies syfte är att belysa vad samtida forskning säger gällande användningen av multimodalt material inom undervisning av engelska i mellanstadiet. Forskningsfrågorna fokuserar på de positiva- och negativa effekter användningen av olika multimodala material kan ha för engelskinlärningen samt hinder och möjligheter de kan innebära för lärares engelskundervisning. Studiens metod har bestått i att söka vetenskaplig forskning via databaser där tidiga sökord gav upphov till viss litteratur som i sin tur bidragit med vidare sökord och kedjesökningar. Materialet studien använt sig av innefattar artiklar och bokkapitel vilka behandlat drama, digitala berättelser, multimodala texter och kollage som pedagogiska multimodala material för engelskundervisning. Studien är inriktad mot elever i årskurs 4–6, men i brist på åldersenlig forskning har material som behandlar elever i både aktuell, yngre och äldre åldrar använts. Resultatet visade på en övervägande del positiva effekter för elevers engelskinlärning, gällande motivation, språkförståelse och kontextuellt meningsskapande. De negativa effekterna som uppmärksammats berör distraktion och sjunkande intresse för visst material relaterat till elevers åldrar. Resultatet visade en jämnare fördelning mellan möjligheter och hinder för engelskundervisningen till följd av materialen. Möjligheterna är att materialen kan skapa samarbete mellan elever i klassrummet och då vissa material baseras på teknik kan de bidra till en innovativ användning av elever. Hindren är att materialen kan skapa missriktad motivation och distraktion som avleder eleverna från undervisningens syfte. Dessutom är materialen baserade på teknik, beroende av att läraren besitter den kompetens som behövs för att använda dem effektivt för undervisningens syfte. Litteraturstudiens slutsats är att multimodala material främst visar på positiva effekter för elevers engelskinlärning men att det även finns påtagliga hinder för engelskundervisningen. Dessutom har studien belyst en rådande brist på svensk forskning inom området.

The aim of this study was to show whether there was a correlation between teachers’ opinions on the use of English in the EFL classroom and the students’ grades. The participants were four classes consisting of 75 students and four teachers from two Swedish upper secondary schools. A mixed-method was used consisting of two questionnaires and the students’ final grades from their English 5 course. The questionnaires were self-administrated and distributed via Google drive. Findings from this study indicate that there was no relationship between the teachers’ opinions and the students’ grades, but that Extramural English seems to affect the students’ grades. The extent of this has, however, not been established in this study. Further research within this area is needed.

Teachers need to continuously develop their Information and Communication Technology (ICT) proficiency to keep up with the rapid development of technology, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only made this more apparent. This study aims to understand how EFL-teachers exercise their teacher agency and adapt their teaching in an environment where ICT is the basis for their teaching. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six upper secondary school teachers and then analysed using thematic analysis. The results showed a significant decrease in professional development as a result of reduced contact between colleagues. Most teachers have focused on developing their toolspecific skills. Adaption of teaching strategies has seen the most success in the teaching of writing proficiency. Most teachers are familiar with integrating technology with writing. Most teachers have found strategies to increase the accessibility of information as well as increased clarity of tasks. However, teachers have found it difficult to motivate students who have a hard time working on their own. They have also found it difficult to follow students’ progress in more extensive tasks.

This research study explores to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for vocabulary acquisition. Based on research statistics provided by Eurostat (2020) the majority of students in Sweden learn English as a foreign language. Therefore, the focus of the study is based on investigating the EFL classroom in Sweden. The research question this study is based on is to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for teaching English as a foreign language in the Swedish school from grade one to three in terms of children's ability to learn vocabulary. The method used for this research to collect scientific journals, dissertations and related research that can contribute to this discussion and result of this study is collected through different electronic databases. The access to studies conducted in an EFL classroom was rather restrictive and therefore the majority of the studies used were conducted on children who studied English as a first language in preschool and grade one to three in primary school. Whilst the selected studies target groups differed in age, findings indicate that the benefits of only reading aloud have little influence on children’s vocabulary acquisition. However, findings also presented that using word explanation and repetition during read aloud is shown to be more beneficial for vocabulary acquisition.

Reading English literature can help learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to develop their reading ability as well as other language skills. Reading can also have other benefits for EFL students such as learning about the target language’s culture or learn about an English variety in written form. This present study investigates what types of literature are used in Swedish upper secondary school, the EFL teachers’ attitudes towards short stories compared to simplified novels/graded readers and their preferred assessment methods associated with literature teaching. The majority of the teachers that took part in this survey have a positive attitude towards short stories and use them in their EFL classes. The results also show that after the students have completed reading a short story, most of the teachers that participated in this survey preferred to combine examination methods such as a group discussion with a written test. The title of this paper comes from one of the informants’ comments when asked if she would rather use a short story or a graded reader in her English class. This informant had used graded readers in her English language classroom, but she and everyone that took part in this survey chose short stories over graded readers.

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.