Swedish EFL Students' Awareness of Connotations : A quantitative and qualitative study on students' awareness of connotations

Abstract: This study aimed to analyse Swedish EFL students' efficiency on connotations. Connotation isa word's implied meaning which brings neutral, positive, or negative associations in aconversation. In this study, connotations were examined in terms of their appropriateness ifused in different contexts. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether Swedishstudents of an intermediate level showed sufficient skills in comprehending a word'sappropriateness when compared to a native speaker. Furthermore, this study also aimed toanalyse in what ways students engaged in English during their spare time show a correlation tohigher test scores. The results indicate that the Swedish students' combined score on theconnotation test showed less than half of the full score. The results also highlight that thestudents who are engaged in English more frequently compared to those who are not showedhigher test scores.