To Örebro University

The ability to comprehend academic texts is one of the most important skills that university students who speak English as a second or foreign language need to acquire (Dreyer & Nel, 2003), but previous research has showed a majority of Swedish students understand less when the textbook is in English (Pecorari, Shaw, Malmström, & Irvine, 2011). Despite this, the role of upper secondary school in students’ preparedness for reading academic English at university has not been investigated. In this paper, the aim is to explore what role English 7 – an optional course in upper secondary school – has currently and suggest what role it should have in the future by looking at students’ perceptions of the course. In addition, this paper will present the results from quantitative analyses contrasting the reading ability of students who have attended English 7 with students who have not.

To answer these questions, a sequential explanatory design (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann & Hanson, 2003) has been used, involving two questionnaires with 505 participants and follow-up interviews with 12 of the participants. The closed-ended questionnaire items have been analyzed using a combination of descriptive and inferential statistics, while the open-ended questionnaire items and interview transcripts have been analyzed using content analysis. Results show students who have attended English 7 report fewer difficulties with reading English course literature than students who only attended English 6 on a number of different variables. However, students who have attended English 7 also report having had higher grades in English in previous years (p < .001). Interview data suggests students with lower grades are discouraged from taking the additional course by teachers and other students, seemingly creating two large groups with varying abilities in English.

References

Creswell, J., Plano Clark, V., Gutmann, M., & Hanson, W. (2003). Advanced mixed methods research designs. In A. Tashakkori, & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research (pp. 209-240). Sage Publications.

Pecorari, D., Shaw, P., Malmström, H., & Irvine, A. (2011). English textbooks in parallel language tertiary education. TESOL Quarterly, 45(2), 313-333.