Teacher Talk in the Swedish EFL Classroom for Grades 4-6 : Ways to promote pupils' development of communicative abilities

Sammanfattning: Given the explicit focus of compulsory schooling in Sweden on providing pupils with opportunities to develop their communicative abilities, all available resources should be utilised to their fullest potential - one of these resources being the way a teacher talks to and with their pupils, i.e., their teacher talk. Previous research in the field has had its focus on non-Swedish classroom contexts and has primarily considered the impacts of teacher talk on learners in secondary school or above. This study therefore set out to contribute to the field by observing Swedish EFL lessons for grades 4-6 and interviewing the teachers of these lessons. The observations show that different teacher-talk categories were employed at varied frequencies, some noticeably more widely represented than others. Additionally, valuable insight was gained from the interviews into teachers’ reflections on their didactic choices made regarding teacher talk. Some of the teachers’ choices correlated with those found in previous research, such as the rationale for direct translations from L2 to L1. On the other hand, it emerged that teachers perceived that some teacher-talk categories were utilised more in the higher grades, in contrast with the results noted in the observations of this study. This could suggest that teachers were not utilising all available resources effectively and possibly could benefit from further support and/or training in how to use their teacher talk consciously. To comprehensively evaluate which, to what extent, and why different teacher-talk categories are represented, further research should focus on a prolonged engagement in longitudinal studies of Swedish EFL classrooms representing a greater variety and number of schools as well as participating teachers.