Assessing the Invisible : Teachers' views on the assessment of language-learning strategies in Swedish upper secondary school

Sammanfattning: When revising the curriculum for the Swedish upper secondary school in 2011, language-learning strategies were added to the description of the subject of English. It was also added to the core content and to the grading criteria, which in its turn has added a new dimension to teaching and assessing L2. By problematizing the teachers’ subjective views on assessment of these new criteria, the hypothesis, according to which teachers find assessing language learning strategies, in English 5, difficult, is discussed. Skolverket’s policy documents, the Common European Framework of Reference scale (CEFR scale) and researchers’ findings are compared to the teachers’ views. In order to provide an image of how teachers interpret the new assessment guidelines, and how teachers interpret problems related to assessment, six teachers from different upper secondary schools have been interviewed on their opinions about language-learning strategies. The interviews indicate that even though teachers are positive to the inclusion of language-learning strategies in the course description, the strategies are difficult to detect. One consequence is that the results of strategy use are assessed rather than actual strategy use.