This essay aims to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students’ extramural reading (ER) habits as well as if and how these habits affect students’ attitudes toward and motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom. The research questions addressed are: “What are Swedish upper secondary school students’ extramural reading habits?” and “Do students’ extramural reading habits affect their a) attitudes toward, and b) motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom? If yes, in what way?” As engagement in extramural English is suggested to both motivate and demotivate students to read in school, this essay can provide insights into how students’ extramural reading habits affect the reading they do in school. A questionnaire is used to collect data from 99 Swedish upper secondary school students from all three English courses. The questionnaire consists of closed-ended and open-ended questions about the students’ extramural reading habits, attitudes toward and motivation for reading in the L2 English classroom. Quantitative content analysis is used to analyse the data. The findings of this essay reveal that the reading habits of the participating students are varied. While some students read extramurally in English frequently and in a large quantity, others never read extramurally in English. The most commonly read text types are web texts and subtitles. Furthermore, the results show that some aspects of students’ attitudes toward reading in the L2 classroom are significantly affected by the students’ ER and that 77% of the students agree to some extent that their extramural reading provides them with more motivation to read in school. To conclude, pedagogical implications in relation to the findings of this essay are discussed.

This essay aims to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students' perceptions about their attitudes and motivation towards extensive reading in English. Further, this essay also aims to investigate students' attitudes towards self-selected reading as a potentially more motivational classroom strategy in comparison to teacher-selected reading. The main research questions addressed are 'What are Swedish upper secondary school students' attitudes to extensive reading in English?' and 'Do the students perceive self-selected reading to be more motivational than teacher-selected reading?'. The hypothesis is that students recognize learner autonomy to have a positive effect upon their reading attitudes and therefore prefer self-selected reading materials. Through collecting data using mixed methods consisting of 40 questionnaires and seven interviews, and further analyzing this data using qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics, this study presents several findings. The results show that students’ attitudes are mixed: students are both more positive and negative towards extensive reading in English than for reading in general. Through further comparing the students' attitudes regarding the two reading selection practices—self-selected or teacher-selected reading—this study shows that 90% of students believe that self-selected reading would positively impact their reading enjoyment. Additionally, the results also imply that it is not necessarily learner autonomy that students perceive as likely to improve their reading attitudes, but that they rather just want their reading materials to align with their personal interests. This degree project essay concludes that many of the students are not feeling intrinsically motivated to read in their English class, and are thus relying on extrinsic factors for motivation instead, such as grades, which leaves them with negative reading experiences and attitudes. Finally, some pedagogical implications in relation to this study's findings are discussed.