Teachers’ perception of extramural English as lesson content

Sammanfattning: The following study investigates teachers’ perception of extramural English (EE) activities as an in-class learning material connected to pupils’ motivation to speak English. We have witnessed during our teacher training program pupils being reluctant towards English speaking activities in school. Consequently, we questioned the use of textbooks as a basis for learning material rather than incorporating pupils’ EE activities they engage in on a voluntary basis into the classroom. Therefore, with this study, we examined two teachers that incorporate EE as a learning material within an English as a foreign language classroom. The results show that an EE teaching practice is likely to endorse pupils’ motivation to speak English, their linguistic confidence, as well as lower speaking anxiety. The results also highlight a teaching concept grounded on familiar contexts to the pupils, but not always involving their EE activities. Therefore, a fusion between EE and areas familiar to the pupils’ resulted in EE as In- Class Activities (EE-ICA) classifications. From these results, EE-ICA could be divided into four categories: Primary EE-ICA, Secondary EE-ICA, Tertiary and non-EE. However, the result imply that lesson tasks based entirely on EE activities may be difficult to achieve and not beneficial for all pupils. Nonetheless, lesson content that involves EE activities the pupils can relate to could be a well-functioning base for increasing pupils’ motivation to speak.