To Örebro University

This paper reports on a study of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Sweden that aimed to generate a list of potential ideas for a research agenda in the English subject for upper primary school(grades 4−6), lower secondary school (grades 7−9) and upper secondary school (English 5, 6 and 7). Participating teachers responded to survey items that were based on the current National Curriculum for the English subject for grades 4−9 (i.e., LGR 11) and upper secondary school (i.e., LGY 11), which aim to stipulate content but not methods for teaching. As such, teachers are often left to interpret the curriculum themselves, with some support from complementary documents, which can lead to a range of learning outcomes and teacher ability. The survey focused both on teacher perceptions of student performance and the teachers’own confidence in teaching various aspects of the English subject as described in the curriculum. This paper reports the results from the survey, identifying specific aspects of thefour main language skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, writing) about which teachers expressed concern in terms of student performance, their own teaching ability, or both. Findings from this study can be used as a tentative agenda for implementing classroom research projects to investigate interpretations of the current steering documents and methods being used in EFL classrooms and the effects of any potential pedagogic innovations.