The aim of this study is to investigate 1) students’ attitudes towards English, 2) students’ attitudes towards reading in English and 3) if there is a correlation between students’ attitudes and their results in a reading comprehension test. In total, 39 students from three different classes volunteered for this study. The data were collected by using a questionnaire regarding students’ attitudes towards English and reading in English as well as by letting the participants take part in a reading comprehension test. The results show that students’ attitudes towards English does not necessarily play a part in how well they perform in a reading comprehension test.

This study explores Swedish English language teacher’s (ELT’s) attitudes towards EE, their reasons for or against its inclusion in their classrooms, and how these views affect their planning, instruction and assessment. Themes for investigation are established through thorough review of literature in the field in a Swedish context and explored through thematic analysis of interviews and a survey study. The ELTs in this study view EE as a positive contribution to students’ language development and a good source of authentic materials. Inclusion of EE is seen as a way to increase student engagement. However the causal relationship between EE and language proficiency is questioned. EE and ELTs’ attitudes towards it can be clearly seen to affect lesson planning, classroom activities and assessment. Inclusion of students’ EE is used by some ELTs as a tool to bridge differences caused by heterogenous levels of proficiency and authenticity gaps. Lastly, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teachers viewed inclusion of EE as a critical aspect in their instruction. Municipal teachers saw inclusion of EE primarily as a method to increase student engagement.

Syftet med studien var att testa en metod inspirerad av metoden Talk for Writing, i studien benämnd imitationsmetoden, i engelska med elever i årskurs 3. För att uppnå syftet med studien formulerades två forskningsfrågor: Hur effektiv är undervisning baserad på imitationsmetoden vid utveckling av elevers vokabulär? Hur anger elever att deras upplevelse påverkas av undervisning i engelska baserad på imitaionsmetoden? Studien genomfördes utifrån en flermetodsansats där både kvantitativa och kvalitativa undersökningar användes samt att studien utgick från en kvasiexprementell forskningsdesign. Kvasiexperimentet bestod av ett för- och ett eftertest i experimentgrupperna och kontrollgruppen samt att en upplevelseenkät genomfördes i experimentgrupperna. Undervisningen bestod av fem undervisningstillfällen utifrån imitationsmetoden och målet under imitationslektionerna var att eleverna utvecklade större vokabulär på engelska. Samtliga grupper i studien bestod av elever från årskurs tre på en större skola i utkanten av en mindre stad. Resultatet av för- och eftertesterna jämfördes utifrån samtliga gruppers resultat. Utifrån resultatet kunde ingen signifikant skillnad mellan för- och eftertesterna klargöras och därför gick inte reslutatet att jämföras till övriga populationen. Däremot visade studiens resultat av upplevelseenkäterna att större delen av eleverna i experimentgrupperna upplevde att förståelsen förbättrades efter imitationslektionerna i jämförelse med innan imitationsmetodens införande.

As a result of the increase of digitalisation in today’s society over the recent years, the Swedish school system requires a certain degree of digital competence amongst teachers. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only accelerated the digitalisation of schools it even forced teaching to become digital for some time. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how Swedish ESL/EFL teachers in secondary school utilise digital tools to support pupils with writing and reading difficulties and their awareness of these difficulties. In order to meet the formulated aim of this paper, the research questions have been separated into three sections. The first area involves writing and reading difficulties in English courses. The second aspect of this research will examine which digital tools English teachers use to support students that struggle with reading and writing in the classroom, and the third aspect is how they apply these tools to their teaching. In this qualitative study, four English teachers participated. The empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The results show that the interviewees experienced that the use of digital tools supported and developed students in their reading skills. Moreover, previous research concludes that digital tools have a profitable effect on students’ motivation and learning. However, the interviewees’ struggled to present digital teaching strategies to support struggling writers and did not present an effective digital tool for students with writing difficulties. Additionally, we discovered that the teachers in this study lacked the knowledge to some extent regarding digital tools to support these students; hence, the importance of providing further education to teachers regarding our research topic to offer an equivalent and inclusive school environment for all students. Further, research on digital tools and how to support students were limited. Therefore, we suggest future research on the topic with a focus on digital teaching strategies.

Eftersom vi till vardags ständigt influeras av det engelska språket är det viktigt att tillmötesgå detta i undervisningen och ta till vara på elevers erfarenheter och intressen. Självtilliten till att tala engelskan i klassrummet behöver stärkas, både hos lärare och elever. För att genomföra en bra och framgångsrik engelskundervisning behöver strategier tillämpas så att språkinlärningen blir gynnsam. Således ska dessa undervisningsstrategier innehålla meningsfulla och tydliga metoder som genererar att eleverna känner sig trygga och säkra i utövandet av språket. Denna kunskapsöversikt syftar till att få en överblick av hur forskningen ser ut inom undervisning av engelska i grundskolan. Översikten syftar även till att ta reda på lärares uppfattning av engelskundervisningen samt gynnsamma strategier för inlärning av engelska. Urvalet gjordes med hjälp av ett antal kriterier och via databaserna ERIC (ProQuest), Google Scholar, Diva och Primo som resulterade i åtta valda artiklar. En kartläggning av artiklarna genomfördes och en sammanställning av artiklarnas syfte, urval, metod och resultat gjordes, samt kunskapsöversiktens syfte och frågeställningar. Utifrån kartläggningen av artiklarna framkommer en övergripande bild av hur engelskundervisningen ser ut i svensk grundskola. Lärare vittnar om bristande självtillit till målspråksanvändning samt didaktiska svårigheter med undervisningen. Även att elever har svårigheter med att tala engelska i klassrummet på grund av dålig motivation och sviktande självförtroende. Elever beskriver accepterade och icke-accepterade lärmiljöer, även det positiva med kontextbunden undervisning. Detta är något vi tar med oss till kommande yrkesliv samt flertalet förslag på hur undervisningen kan bedrivas för att öka elevmotivationen. Det framkommer också förslag på vidare forskning där svagheter inom fältet identifierats.

Reading literature has always been a big part of developing language skills, critical thinkingand imaginative thinking. However, research show that adolescents in today’s society tend toread less literature both inside and outside of the classroom. The Swedish National Agency forEducation emphasizes the importance of reading written texts in the subject English, yet thesyllabi do not offer specific recommendations or guidelines. This thesis paper aims toinvestigate how English teachers choose literature in the EFL classroom to motivate studentsto read and how they structure teaching around these books to motivate their students to read.For this qualitative research four interviews with open-ended questions were held and the datashows that teachers are struggling to understand what literary texts they are expected to use.Thus, the teachers have developed multiple strategies to manage demotivated students in theclassroom and the most common way to teach about literature was to use fiction as the mainsource. The most common way to motivate students to read is to have an open conversationwith the students why reading is important and providing them with a good study technique tofeel less stressed.

The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers use strategies to promote interaction. It is our ambition to find out how teachers perceive interaction and how they think their students may benefit from their use of strategies. The sociocultural theory on learning is used as a theoretical framework for this study. This framework aligns with our research questions as well as the prior research that we present. Prior research suggeststhat in order for the students to develop a foreign language they need to be provided with an authentic context and a variety of opportunities to interact. We conducted three semi-structured interviews with qualified teachers teaching at primary school level. Our gathered results are presented under four different themes connected to our research questions. The results show that these teachers reported using strategies mostly as scaffolding and were somewhat unaware of how to define a strategy. Also, the teachers’ perception of interaction did not always align with prior research. Moreover, research suggests that students need to be taught communicative strategies explicitly in order to implement these when solving problems. Our results show that in order for this to happen the teachers need to use strategies more frequently during lessons. The major conclusions of this study are that the educators we interviewed, did not focus on using strategies as much as researchers suggest theyshould. Also, there was a misconception of what defines as interaction and we got the idea that the educators thought that planning lessons with a focus on interaction and strategies were more time consuming than using the English textbook.

Recent literature suggests that communicative language tasks widely used by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to try and improve Japanese students’ learning have had little effect on improving their language ability and their intrinsic motivation to improve. Consequently, a number of teachers are now using interactive technology in the classroom although it has not been systematically implemented or widely studied. Understanding the approaches of successful EFL teachers—specifically, how teachers using an andragogic approach through experiential learning might affect student engagement—was the purpose of this qualitative study. The conceptual framework focused on student-centered learning and included Knowles’s theory of andragogy and Kolb’s experiential learning. The perceptions of 10 EFL teachers chosen through purposeful sampling and who regularly used technology in the classroom were gauged through structured interviews, direct observations, and document analysis. Emergent themes were extracted from the data through interpretive analysis. Results supported the fact that andragogic-based tasks with technology increased student engagement in the Japanese EFL university classroom by directly improving interaction between students and by stimulating communication and autonomous learning. The outcome of the study was a professional development program that was designed to provide better teacher training on facilitating technology-based lessons that engage learners and improve their language skills. Positive social change will result from providing better teacher training that focuses on facilitating technology-based lessons that engage Japanese university learners’ full potential and improve their language skills in more meaningful ways.

This study investigates the relationships between foreign language anxiety (FLA), motivation and achievement in EFL-learners in secondary and tertiary education. Research previous to 2009 generally reaches the conclusion that learners with more motivation have less FLA and higher achievement, and learners with more FLA have lower motivation and achievement. The present study synthesises eight studies from late 2009 to 2020, and it was found that although six studies are generally in accordance with the earlier research, they disagreed with one another concerning what motivational and FLA subscales were most related. Some differences in the conclusions of the studies are theorised to be due to the different motivational constructs the studies focused on. All studies also failed to show a cause-and-effect relationship between any of the variables or agree on the extent to which they were related. This suggested the advantage of looking at the variables as part of a dynamic system, in which all the variables affect one another, and the relationships are constantly changing. Further research was suggested in the area of FLA to identify its factors and which learners suffer from it.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Rania Hassan Talafhah , for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction, presented on 4 May 2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: JORDANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ PRACTICES AND EXPERIENCES MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Christina C. McIntyre The purpose of this mixed-methods sequential explanatory study was to identify the EFL learners’ practices and understand their experiences with SNSs (social networking sites) as a tool for English language learning. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, quantitative results were obtained from a survey of 144 undergraduate Jordanian EFL learners in the English and Translation Departments at Yarmouk University in Jordan. In the second phase, richer information and a deeper insight was gained through a qualitative case study. In the quantitative phase of the study, the research questions focused on the actual practices and strategies of EFL students on SNSs. In the qualitative phase, 12 participants were purposefully selected and interviewed in order to explain further the statistical results of the first phase, develop a rich descriptive picture of their lived experiences using social networking to improve their English language learning, and identify the factors and barriers that influence their practices. This study was guided by the following research questions: 1. To what extent do Jordanian EFL learners use Facebook as a tool for language learning? 2. What language learning practices do Jordanian EFL learners engage in on Facebook? 3. How do these Facebook practices affect their language learning experiences? The results revealed that most participants felt comfortable using Facebook in English language learning. However, less than half of them used Facebook on a regular basis to learn English. In addition, they tended to read and observe discussions in English rather than participate in them or produce language output. The results also revealed that learners’ practices or behaviors in the SNS environment changed depending on certain factors, such as the context, audience, sense of belonging, self – confidence, and the learners’ needs and interests. The results of the study brought to light some implications in the context of formal and informal language learning. The study might raise learner, teacher, and educator awareness about SNSs as a tool for language learning, particularly for countries with limited resources. The results also showed the need for a theoretical and pedagogical framework for the teaching and learning process that identifies the best practices and ways to avoid any harm in a SNS environment. Integrating SNSs in language teaching and learning is a topic that requires further study. Using SNSs inside and outside the classroom to practice different language skills is an important topic for future research.