Winterson’s Written on the Body is an experimental and provocative novel that challenges the reader’s mindset as well as society’s heteronormativity by implicitly questioning societal norms and fundamental values. With an unusual protagonist as a point of departure, upper secondary school students in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom can discuss important political and social issues and giving them the chance to become more open-minded and inclusive towards all people regardless of one’s sex, gender, and, or sexuality. This essay shows that Written on the Body with its unusual, queer protagonist challenges the heteronormativity in modern Western societies and instead of solely focusing on students’ language development during their English education, they are invited to interrupt and question set attitudes, behaviours, and traditions in modern Western societies.

Formative assessment is an integral part of teaching, not only as a tool for monitoring student-development, but also as basis for potential adjustments of pedagogical strategies. Therefore, this research paper examines how upper secondary students perceive, and report acting on different forms of formative assessment on writing in the subject of English 6. It also highlights what teachers perceive as key strategies in formative assessment, and how they report applying these strategies for improving students writing when teaching English 6. How teachers report clarifying, sharing, and explaining learning goals and criteria for success to their English 6 students is also discussed. The study was carried out by using mixed methods research and included a student questionnaire, a student focus group interview, and individual teacher interviews. Our results show important similarities and crucial differences in how students and teachers perceive different forms of formative assessment on writing, as well as how they perceive the learning goals and criteria for success in the subject of English 6. Moreover, our study identifies the need for further research on the perceptions of formative assessment on writing from a student viewpoint. In addition, we present ideas on how teachers could work with different forms of formative assessment to better meet the students’ needs.