Perceptions of extramural English and English in the classroom: Swedish upper secondary students’ writing, reading, listening and speaking skills

Abstract: This study examines, through the use of a quantitative questionnaire, to what extent Swedish upper secondary students are involved in receptive and productive extramural English activities and what their perceptions are of learning English inside and outside of school. Extramural English (EE) is a term referring to the English students encounter outside school as extra means ‘outside’ and mural means ‘walls’. This study also investigates if the students perceive that the extramural English activities facilitate their classroom learning of English, and more specifically in relation to the language proficiencies reading, listening, writing and speaking. The results showed that the students reported being involved in mostly receptive EE activities as the most common activities they reported being involved in daily were related to listening and reading. The listening activities involved watching English-language TV-programs, TV-series and movies with and without Swedish subtitles and reading English texts. 98% of the students perceived that they do learn English outside of school while 68.6% of the students perceived that the English that they learned outside school facilitated classroom learning. The language proficiency the students perceived they developed most outside school was listening as 39% reported they "developed very much". The majority of students also reported to be more comfortable speaking and writing in English outside of school, and 57% indicated that they have learned most of their English knowledge outside of the school environment.