Abstract
This study was carried out amongst students in grade ten at the end of their primary education (lower secondary school). The study set out to investigate students’ views and use of English in and outside of school including their present and anticipated future use of English. Data was collected in schools throughout Iceland with 703 students participating. The findings support emerging evidence of Icelandic students’ extensive receptive use of English outside the classroom, even from an early age in some instances. A gap was identified between learners’ use of English in school and their use of English outside the classroom calling into question the relevance of the prevalent teaching pedagogy in grade ten. Traditional foreign language teaching methods seem still to be prevalent and the extramural English students are exposed to seems to for the most part to be ignored in the classroom. The results highlight the need for a more pragmatic instructional approach, taking into account the learners’ interests in English, their present and future use and need for English proficiency. The study indicates that important aspects promoted in the National Curriculum Guide have not found their way into the classroom. These include an emphasis on learner autonomy, e.g. learners’ metacognitive awareness and learner’s skills in monitoring and assessing their own proficiency.
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- 1.
Primary education in Iceland begins at age 6 in the first Grade and ends at age 16 in the 10th Grade.
- 2.
The terms World English, English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) are used in the literature for the same or similar phenomena although there is no consensus of the appropriateness of these terms. Here we will use ELF for English used between native and non- native speakers or between non- native speakers in different realms of intercommunication.
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Ingvarsdóttir, H., Jóhannsdóttir, Á. (2018). Learning and Using English: The Views of Learners at the End of Compulsory Education. In: Arnbjörnsdóttir, B., Ingvarsdóttir, H. (eds) Language Development across the Life Span. Educational Linguistics, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67804-7_5
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