"I'm not forcing anyone" : A Study on Motivation and Willingness to Communicate in English in a Swedish Upper-Secondary School Context

Abstract: This study aims to expand on the existing knowledge of Swedish upper-secondary students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English and provide insight into how motivational strategies are used in some Swedish English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classrooms by the teachers. To gather data, four teachers were interviewed, and three of them observed in class, and 67 students answered a questionnaire. The majority of the teachers perceived their students’ WTC in the English classroom as low, and the students reported their WTC as low but also expressed some desire to improve it. In the classroom, the observed teachers showed nothing of what they claimed in the interviews to be doing to motivate their students to speak English in the classroom. The participating students suggested more speaking activities and opportunities to improve their WTC, as well as the teacher putting more pressure on them to speak English in the classroom.