Homework for English from the Students’ Perspective

Sammanfattning: This study investigates students’ beliefs and thoughts on homework for English. Two focus group interviews were conducted at the senior level of a compulsory school in the south of Sweden. From the interviews, we see that the students see an increasing vocabulary as the main purpose for homework in the English classroom, and that homework as such is never discussed in class. All students feel stressed because of homework, but a solution to this would be to have extra time in school for doing their homework. Moreover, the home context is an important factor in a student’s engagement in homework. In addition, the results show that vocabulary learning is the most frequent homework task for English, and that this is also the most preferable task. Finally, it seems that homework tasks are not individualised in the English classroom. To conclude, it is suggested that homework should be discussed more widely, and that the different assignments for English are varied and based upon different learner strategies.