The present study administered six test instruments to 13- to 14-year-old learners of English in Austria and Sweden (N = 213), countries offering settings with more explicit and implicit learning environments, respectively. Confirmatory Factor Analyses for Austria yielded a factor comprising timed grammaticality judgment tests, an oral narrative…

Although research on content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has shown that CLIL instruction may enhance students' second or foreign language learning compared to regular foreign language instruction, there are also studies that have indicated similar language development between CLIL and non-CLIL students. However, CLIL can be organized…

According to the Simple View of Reading, decoding and linguistic comprehension are essential for reaching efficient reading comprehension. Students with Swedish as a first (L1) or second language (L2) in grades 1-3 might need special support to develop reading comprehension. In order to identify needs in reading in L1 and L2 students, the current…

Today, the Common European Framework of Reference (2009), and with it the action-based approach, underlies English Language Teaching (ELT) curricula throughout Europe. However, actual teaching practices are likely to vary according to factors such as the educational level and supra-national differences, including legal guidelines and the level of…

The current article examined educational achievement at lower-secondary level in Sweden (Grade 9), using grades and national test results (NTR) as the dependent variables. Linear regressions and bivariate correlations indicated that the proportion of highly-educated individuals in each municipality was positively associated with grades and NTR and…

Purpose: This study reports on the development of an auditory passage comprehension task for Swedish primary school children of cultural and linguistic diversity. It also reports on their performance on the task in quiet and in noise. Method: Eighty-eight children aged 7-9 years and showing normal hearing participated. The children were divided…

Although there have been several comparative studies of willingness to communicate in a first language (L1 WTC), there is a dearth of comparative research on L2 WTC, especially between groups with distinct cultural and educational backgrounds. This study synthesises the L2 motivational self system (ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self) and attitudes…

Exploring multilingualism as a complex, context-related, societal and individual phenomenon, this book centres around perspectives on how multiple languages are made (in)visible within educational settings in the Global North. The authors of each chapter compare and contrast findings across geographical contexts with the goal of understanding the…

In many countries' policy documents and curricula, teachers in the subject areas of science, social science and language are encouraged to collaborate on cross-curricular issues such as sustainable development (SD). This study is conducted in secondary schools (compulsory years 7-9) in Sweden and investigates the similarities and differences in…

The purposes of this study are to examine the relation between playing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games in the wild and L2 English vocabulary and to offer comparisons with non-gamers' vocabulary. Data were collected from two samples of teenage L2 English learners in Sweden, Sample A (N = 1,069) and Sample B (N = 16). Questionnaires and…

Drawing from an ethnographic project on the subject of "Swedish as a second language" (SSL) in three linguistically diverse upper secondary schools, the aim of this study was to investigate how three SSL teachers, one from each school, discursively constructed SSL, and whether and how they legitimated their role as SSL teachers, in…

English is today learnt in multitudes of settings worldwide, making it difficult to characterize relationships between motivation and context in generalized terms (Ushioda 2013). In settings where students have extensive encounters with English outside school, a reluctance to invest effort in formal learning has been observed. To investigate ways…

This paper critically examines the integration of online fanfiction practices into an advanced university English language classroom. The fanfiction project, The Blogging Hobbit, was carried out as part of a course in the teacher education program at a Swedish university for students who were specializing in teaching English at the secondary…

This article reports the findings of a comparative analysis of two English teaching course book series which are widely used in school years 4-6 in Sweden: Good Stuff and New Champion. The analysis comprises comparisons of the vocabulary component in the teaching materials and examines the extent to which words -- adjectives, nouns and verbs --…

This article reports on a classroom-based experiment that tested the effects of three vocabulary teaching constructs (involvement load, spacing, and intentionality) on the learning of English verb-noun collocations--for example, "shelve a plan." Laufer and Hulstijn's (2001) "involvement load" predicts that the higher the…