Fictional Texts in the EFL Classroom in Swedish Compulsory and Upper Secondary Schools : A Qualitative Study of Teachers’ Strategies and Experiences of Teaching and Selecting Fictional Texts to EFL Students in Sweden

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to investigate the approaches to teaching fictional texts that are exercised by English teachers with the intention of gaining an insight to the purpose of fictional texts in the Swedish EFL classroom. The levels in focus are the lower and upper secondary schools. The study was conducted by using a qualitative approach, and the data was collected through interviews with eight currently active English teachers in the Swedish school system. The results of the study reveal that the participants find selecting fictional texts for classroom, as well as student use, arduous to some extent. Correspondingly, the findings also show that the purpose of using fictional texts in the EFL classroom is to develop students’ social and cultural awareness by reading literary works with the following themes: post-colonial areas, arranged marriages, war zones, divorce, friendship, bullying, love and gender, religion, racism and death.