Abstract The purpose of this study was to ascertain to what extent English teachers at the upper secondary level in Sweden use postcolonial literature in their teaching and in that case if it is used in order to teach intercultural competence. The reason for this was the claim that there is a strong connection between postcolonial literature and intercultural competence as well as between postcolonial literature and the curriculum for the upper secondary school, and specifically the English courses. The primary material used was gathered through interviews involving teachers working at an upper secondary school in the southern part of Kronobergs Län. Three out of five interviewees did use postcolonial literature and the main reason was that it provides a platform for students to learn about different cultures and societies in areas in the world where English is used. It also turned out that certain authors were used more frequently than others, namely J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe and Doris Lessing. The theoretical basis for this essay has been the notion of intercultural competence, especially linked with language teaching. Developing intercultural competence provides students with the possibility of gaining increased understanding of different cultures, something that seems to be immensely important in a Swedish school system where the classrooms are becoming more and more multicultural. It is argued here that postcolonial literature lends itself particularly well when it comes to the combination of language- and culture didactics and teachers’ responses in the interviews have given reason to believe that this is in fact so.

Reading literature has always been a big part of developing language skills, critical thinkingand imaginative thinking. However, research show that adolescents in today’s society tend toread less literature both inside and outside of the classroom. The Swedish National Agency forEducation emphasizes the importance of reading written texts in the subject English, yet thesyllabi do not offer specific recommendations or guidelines. This thesis paper aims toinvestigate how English teachers choose literature in the EFL classroom to motivate studentsto read and how they structure teaching around these books to motivate their students to read.For this qualitative research four interviews with open-ended questions were held and the datashows that teachers are struggling to understand what literary texts they are expected to use.Thus, the teachers have developed multiple strategies to manage demotivated students in theclassroom and the most common way to teach about literature was to use fiction as the mainsource. The most common way to motivate students to read is to have an open conversationwith the students why reading is important and providing them with a good study technique tofeel less stressed.

This qualitative study deals with Chinese middle school teachers' and Swedish upper secondary school teachers' beliefs and practices regarding the use of L1 in the EFL classroom. Through semi-structured interview questions, data were collected from five Chinese teachers and five Swedish teachers. The interviews with the Chinese teachers were conducted by the researcher on a one-to-one basis, while five Swedish teachers were asked to answer the same questions via email. The results of this study showed that there were both differences and similarities between the two groups of teachers. The Swedish teachers had a fairly negative view regarding the usage of L1 in the EFL classroom and most of them claimed that the only time they codeswitched was when giving individual feedback, when making direct comparisons to the Swedish language or when the class got out of hand. Most of the five Chinese teachers deemed target language exclusivity not logically feasible and codeswitched mostly with the students' comprehension in mind. The findings mostly agreed with previous research. / Denna kvalitativa studie handlar om kinesiska högstadielärares och svenska gymnasielärares åsikter och bruk när det gäller användningen av moderspråket i engelskundervisningen. Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer samlades data in från fem kinesiska lärare. Intervjuerna med de kinesiska lärarna genomfördes, en i taget. Fem svenska engelsklärare ombads att svara på samma frågor via epost. Resultaten av denna studie visade både skillnader och likheter i åsikter och bruk hos de tio lärarna. De svenska engelsklärarna hade en ganska negativ syn på användningen av modersmålet i engelskunderviningen och kodväxlade mestadels när de gav individuell feedback, när de gjorde direkta jämförelser med det svenska språket och när de förlorade kontrollen över klassen. De flesta av de fem kinesiska lärarna ansåg att exklusiv användning av målspråket inte var logiskt rimligt med tanke på elevernas förståelse. Resultaten stämde mestadels överens med tidigare forskning.

This essay examines Dirie’s and Miller’s Desert Flower and its depiction of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the effect that this violation has had on the narrator. The analysis has been conducted through the critical lens of trauma studies with emphasis on how bearing witness of traumatic events can serve as healing and empowerment in the struggle to end FGM. As the multicultural classroom has grown extensively over the past years, the demand for an intercultural awareness is placed on the schools, where the pupils are to be given the chance to develop an understanding and acceptance of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This essay argues that, in spite of the dilemmas that often occur when teaching trauma as a sensitive and controversial issue, Desert Flower can in fact be used in the EFL classroom to engender intercultural awareness as well as offering the pupils a chance to develop self-actualization and social consciousness.

As the American superhero films continue to increase their popularity around the globe, and because of the reccurent criticism against their poor and stereotypical representation, this essay aims to analyse the two newly made productions Man of Steel and Wonder Woman from a gender perspective. The essay argues a difference in Superman and Wonder Woman’s superhero images and further discussess the opportunities as well as potential problems the superhero narratives can offer to discuss gender in the EFL classroom.

This essay presents an ecocritical reading of water imagery in selected poems by Carol AnnDuffy, with focus on Duffy’s personified water-voices, how water illuminates history, andDuffy’s metaphor of language as water. After a consideration of the problematics of teachingpoetry in the EFL classroom, the essay concludes that Duffy’s poetry holds potential forstudents to develop environmental literacy, both in content and in form.

The present study observed the use of educational code-switching to the L1 (Arabic) among six Arabic EFL teachers at Majmaah University, in Saudi Arabia. It used an a priori set of purposes based on Creswell (2003) and derived categories to examine the linguistic, social, and class management purposes behind code-switching. The instrument consisted of two parts: a demographic questionnaire and an audio recorder used in conjunction with a classroom observation sheet. Although some studies have suggested that educational code-switching to the L1 in EFL classrooms is an unconscious act (e.g., Moghadam, Abdul Samad, & Shahraki, 2012), the present study's results concluded the reverse: that the use of educational code-switching could be interpreted as an intentional practice among teachers in EFL classrooms. The results provided a more in-depth understanding of the use of educational code-switching to the L1 (Arabic). They agreed with previous studies that have found such code-switching to be very common among EFL teachers. Although participants displayed different linguistic, social, and class management purposes, analysis of the data revealed that certain purposes were more common than others, with linguistic purposes being far more common than social, class management, or other purposes. The most common linguistic purpose was to explain new words, and for class management was to clarify activities/exercises. Only two purposes, to engage in small talk with students and to connect between sentences, could not be categorized into one of the three main types.

This essay is a comparative analysis of the novels Pet Sematary and The Shining by Stephen King, where the empathy that the characters may invoke is analyzed. The focus lies on the children, mothers and fathers of the two families featured in the novels, who are analyzed in terms of Leake’s division of easy or difficult empathy. The essay also discusses the use of horror fiction in the EFL-classroom and how it may train students’ ability to empathize and motivate reluctant readers. The child characters mainly offer easy empathy since they experience negative emotions and victimization. The adult characters appear to be more nuanced, especially the two fathers who may invoke a combination of easy and difficult empathy through their change towards antagonists, or through their abusive behavior. Due to King’s complex characters, and suspenseful storytelling, it is possible that horror fiction of this kind can be used in the EFL-classroom to attract reluctant readers. As the students also come in contact with difficult empathy they can train their ability to understand and empathize with people who may act in ways that the students normally would disagree with. In that regard, it appears that horror fiction can have a pedagogical use in the EFL-classroom.

This research study explores to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for vocabulary acquisition. Based on research statistics provided by Eurostat (2020) the majority of students in Sweden learn English as a foreign language. Therefore, the focus of the study is based on investigating the EFL classroom in Sweden. The research question this study is based on is to what extent reading aloud is beneficial for teaching English as a foreign language in the Swedish school from grade one to three in terms of children's ability to learn vocabulary. The method used for this research to collect scientific journals, dissertations and related research that can contribute to this discussion and result of this study is collected through different electronic databases. The access to studies conducted in an EFL classroom was rather restrictive and therefore the majority of the studies used were conducted on children who studied English as a first language in preschool and grade one to three in primary school. Whilst the selected studies target groups differed in age, findings indicate that the benefits of only reading aloud have little influence on children’s vocabulary acquisition. However, findings also presented that using word explanation and repetition during read aloud is shown to be more beneficial for vocabulary acquisition.

Fake news is nowadays part of our everyday lives, especially for those who are exposed to social media. As 8 out of 10 Swedish teenagers mainly read news on social media, this study was conducted to investigate to what extent students are taught to deal with fake news. This was done by examining exercises in English workbooks currently used at the upper secondary level. Skolverket (2021) clearly states that it is part of Swedish teachers’ mission to educate students so that they can orientate and act in a complex reality with a large flow of information, increased digitization and a rapid pace of change. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to examine how and to what extent workbooks in the Swedish EFL classroom provide students with tasks which can be said to further skills related to source criticism and critical thinking. It also aims to address the possible prevalence of insufficient skills of the above-mentioned kind and its potentially harmful consequences. This was done by investigating how exercises in workbooks can be said to promote an improvement of source criticism and critical thinking. The method of the presented study emanates from the theoretical framework of critical literacy from a pragmatic perspective. The study is qualitative as the examined material is limited. The results show that the workbooks vary in how they enable the ability to detect bias and critical thinking and that the workbooks rely on teachers to elaborate instructions. This indicates that the exercises in the workbooks may not be sufficient to fulfil the mission stated by Skolverket (2021).