The present thesis investigates to what extent contemporary ELT textbooks include reading materials as well as what types of texts are being used and what reading strategies they seemingly promote. Additionally, the study analyzes whether there is a noticeable discrepancy in teaching materials designed for the vocational and university preparatory and considers whether the design of the current textbook is representative of the current view of reading as a teaching tool as reflected in official policy documents. Through the means of a content analysis of a total of six in use ELT textbooks, the study discovers that few ELT textbooks include a satisfactory amount of reading materials and that there is a significant discrepancy between teaching materials intended for the separate orientations of upper secondary school in Sweden. It is also discovered that the set of textbooks largely reflect the current view of language teaching. The study concludes that the current practice of language teaching is ill-suited to counter the development of declining reading literacy and suggests an alternative methodology in extensive reading.

Education in the Swedish school system should aim to assist pupils in the development of fundamental values. This study investigates to what extent different groups of people are represented within two textbooks for English language teaching (ELT), produced in Sweden and commonly used in Swedish schools and how these representations correlate with the values indicated in the curriculum. Additionally, this study explores if textbooks designed for ELT can be adapted and used as a resource in the Arts classroom for multimodal representation analysis. The study used a multimodal critical discourse analysis with a social semiotic approach to address these questions, looking at the textbooks' textual and visual elements. The result is addressed both quantitatively and qualitatively and showed that, while women were shown in active roles, white men were overrepresented in both the visual and textual representations and people of colour of both genders were underrepresented. The results imply that ELT textbooks have some ways to go in order to meet the representation demands that the curriculum sets and that more research needs to address how to more accurately and frequently represent different groups of people within ELT teaching materials.