This dissertation explores the effect of visuals on test-takers’ L2 listeningprocesses. It uses a mixed methods design, following a concurrent transformative model (Creswell & Poth, 2018). There are three components to the study. The first is a comparison of group performance, aiming to shed light on how test-takers’ test performance may be affected by the inclusion of visuals. A total of 190 undergraduate students in China took part in this component. After being randomly and evenly placed in two groups according to their estimated proficiency level, their listening ability was assessed by a pre-test. They then took one of the two versions of a post-test, one where the participants could both see and hear the speakers, and the other one where they could only hear the speakers. A comparison of the two groups’ post-test scores using ANCOVA showed that the audio-visual participants scored significantly higher than the audio-only participants on the post-test. This indicates that the inclusion of visuals significantly enhanced the participants’ test performance. The second component of the study is a retrospective cued recall that investigatestest-takers’ specific listening processes. Ten participants in each group were randomly selected to join this part to the study. Their post-test test-taking processes were recorded and served as the stimuli for them to recall their viewing patterns, note-taking practice, identification of authentic features, and question-answering approaches. The comparisons between the two groups showed individual and group similarities, along with differences in every aspect of the listening processes. The last component is an analysis of the notes taken by the test-takers. Thequalitative participants’ notes taken during the post-test were rated regarding the correct levels of information noted, overall organization, and irrelevant and incorrect information noted. Using Spearman’s correlations, the note quality was correlated with the post-test scores in each condition. No significant correlations were found. This indicates that there was no substantive relationship between the participants’ note quality and test scores. Based on the results of the study, I advocate for the practice of including visualsin L2 listening tests, and an expansion of the construct definition of academic lecture listening to include the assessment of test-takers’ ability to understand visual cues. I also propose a five-dimension authenticity scale to measure the authenticity level of L2 listening input used on L2 listening tests. The study also has several other practical implications that are useful for L2 listening research, test development, and teaching and learning. Key limitations are acknowledged and discussed, and future research directions are suggested. / Teaching & Learning

This paper presents a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews investigating 1) How teachers in the course English 6 interpret the terms "relatively varied" and "well-grounded and balanced", and how their interpretations differed, 2) How do the teachers interpret the terms in relations to the National Agency for Education’s commentary material?, and 3) What kind of resources do the teachers use to understand those terms? The reason for conducting this research is to gain a greater understanding of how teachers in the course English 6 in upper secondary school interpret the terms in the requirements. The terms in our requirements leave a lot of room for interpretations, and I want to find out how teachers with experiences of teaching interpret the terms in order to better understand how they can be interpret. My finding revealed that three out of four of the interviewed teachers did not mention the terms in their description of them, they brought in other aspects from the requirements, and did not address neither of the terms clearly. This applied to all the teachers, except for T4. The teacher that did address the terms was the only one who read the National Agency’s commentary material, therefore T4’s interpretations of the term aligned closest to the description in the commentary material. From the answers the teachers provided me with, they seemed to interpret the requirements in their own way and this is a validity and reliability issue when assessing the students’ texts. The teachers answers are also discussed from a norm-referenced perspective.

Language teachers’ accounts regarding grammatical assessment have changed over the years. Researchers have presented conflicting approaches, methods and different materials language teachers can use when assessing pupils’ L2 grammar. In addition, different researchers, within the applied linguistic field, have presented and discussed what possibly can affect teachers’ accounts of underlying reasonings for certain practices. This study aims to investigate English teachers’ accounts concerning grammatical assessment and reveal what methods English teachers use, further, what underlying reasonings the teachers have for their choices. To accomplish this investigation, three semi-structured interviews with English teachers from lower secondary schools in Sweden were conducted. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed through thematic analysis and table-coding. The results showed that the English teachers relied on four different methods when assessing their pupils L2 grammar. Grammatical assessment methods that emphasized both a traditional- and alternative assessment approach. Furthermore, all of the English teachers had several underlying reasonings for their grammatical assessment methods. The teachers considered learners’ need, personal experiences, school system guidelines and time constraints. This study provides further insight to the grammatical assessment discussion within teaching English as a second language, and contributes with a perspective of how Swedish lower secondary English teachers work with grammatical assessment.