Research shows that oral proficiency is a big part of communicative competence, and therefore highly relevant for EFL teachers in today’s society. This study aims to investigate what types of activities four EFL teachers in secondary school in Sweden prefer to use in order to practice and assess their students’ oral proficiency. This study further seeks to give an insight in what the four teachers focus on when assessing their students’ oral proficiency. The method used for this study was qualitative, semi- structured interviews with four EFL teachers of different secondary schools in south of Sweden. Furthermore, the data was later coded and analysed with inspiration of the Grounded theory methodology. The results of this study showed that the four teachers used different oral activities very often in their teaching, especially different kinds of discussions. The oral activities were often connected to other projects and assignments that included other skills such as reading and writing. Therefore, the oral proficiency activities were only said to be clearly planned and assessed once or twice per term. Moreover, the four teachers main focus when assessing the students’ oral proficiency seemed to be phenomena like fluency, clearness, adaption to purpose and strategy- usage.

The purpose of this study has been to examine how Swedish teachers of English encourage the development of students’ oral proficiency in the English language. By interviewing six Swedish teachers of English at upper secondary school, the study addresses which methods are mostly used by the teachers in order to encourage the improvement of students’ oral proficiency. The results of the study indicate that all the teachers tried in different manners to encourage students’ self-confidence, which would help them develop their oral proficiency. Furthermore, it was possible to conclude that the teachers shared the notion that insecurity is detrimental to the development of students’ oral proficiency. Another method that was used by the teachers was allowing students to work in either pair or groups. Even though most teachers used this method, they did point out different things that were important to think about in terms of group work. For the teachers, it was important that the students had fun during oral exercises, and thus, most teachers used different games when conducting oral activities in order to inspire a more relaxed or comfortable environment. The last concept that the teachers talked about was the usage of the target language in the classroom. Here the teachers’ ideas were not in alignment with each other. Some thought that it was good to force the students to use the target language throughout the lessons when communicating, whereas others only believed that students had to communicate orally in the target language during speaking activities. If students were insecure, it did not, according to these teachers, help the students to force them to speak English throughout the lessons. Most of the concepts that were introduced by the teachers were similar to those found in previous studies on Swedish teachers of English. Furthermore, the results of this paper could also be tied to previous research concerning oral development for L2 learners. / Syftet med denna studie har varit att studera hur svenska engelskalärare främjar utvecklingen av elevers muntliga färdigheter i engelska. Genom att intervjua sex svenska engelskalärare på gymnasieskolan undersöker studien vilka metoder som används mest av lärarna för att utveckla elevernas muntliga färdigheter. Resultaten av studien visar att de flesta lärare som intervjuades på olika sätt uppmuntrar elevernas självförtroende, vilket i sin tur hjälper dem att utveckla deras muntliga färdighet. Tanken om att osäkerhet är skadligt för elevers utveckling av muntlig färdighet delades av alla lärare som intervjuades. En annan metod som användes av lärarna var att tillåta elever att arbeta i par eller grupper. Även om de flesta lärare använde den här metoden pekade de på olika saker som var viktiga att tänka på när det gällde grupp- och pararbeten. Nästa metod som lärarna använde berörde inspirerandet av en mer avslappnad eller bekväm miljö som möjliggör utvecklingen av elevers muntliga färdigheter. För lärarna var det viktigt att eleverna hade kul under muntliga övningar, och sålunda använde de flesta lärare olika spel när de utförde muntliga aktiviteter. Det sista konceptet som lärarna talade om var användningen av målspråket i klassrummet. Här var lärarens idéer inte i linje med varandra. Vissa trodde att det var bra att tvinga eleverna att använda målspråket under hela lektionen medan andra inte trodde det hjälpte elevernas utveckling av sitt muntliga språk. Om en student var osäker, hjälpte det inte, enligt dessa lärare, att tvinga studenten att tala engelska under lektionerna. De påpekade dock att eleverna var tvungna att under talaktiviteter och muntliga presentationer interagera på målspråket. De flesta av de koncept som lärarna introducerade liknade dem som hittades i tidigare studier om svenska engelskalärare. Dessutom kan resultaten av denna uppsats kopplas till tidigare forskning kring oral development for L2 learners.