Teachers’ Beliefs Regarding Vocabulary Learning

Abstract: This degree project aims to investigate how teachers negotiate their teaching practices and what determines their choice of working methods when it comes to teaching vocabulary. Since we are interested in teachers’ thoughts and opinions regarding vocabulary teaching, a selection of English teachers were interviewed. Our theoretical background is rooted in Nation’s (2001) theories on what it means to know a word, Schmitt’s (2000, 2007) theories on how vocabulary is acquired and on Lundahl’s (2012, 2014) perspectives on traditions in the English classroom. Additionally we used research articles for our analysis of the results. The results from our findings indicate that vocabulary is being taught in both a revised traditional- and a non-traditional way. Our results also show that education and contextual factors influence how teachers teach vocabulary. From our results, we can conclude that our informants teach vocabulary for communicative purposes, but that there is a considerable difference in their approach to vocabulary learning. In addition, we can also conclude that the informants all expressed the need for further professional development in English, and that there is a need for more research on how contextual factors affect teachers in their work.