This paper focuses on EFL classroom reading from a communicative and task-basedperspective. Most lower-secondary school pupils perform well on traditional readingcomprehension tests in English, like the ones encountered in the national tests (Skolverket,2023). However, teachers experience that working with reading can be challenging, especiallywhen reading is linked to the implementation of tasks where the information gained from thewritten text is to be used for a specific communicative purpose (cf. “adapting […] reading tothe form, content and purpose of the language output”, Skolverket, 2024, p. 46, core contentfor year 7-9).

This practice-based problem is at the root of our study, which is part of an ongoing collaborativeproject between researchers and schoolteachers. The project explores pupils’ reading of a newsarticle in relation to the communicative task of recording a summarizing radio report. It iscarried out as a learning study, which is a collaborative, interventional and iterative approachto educational research (Carlgren, Eriksson & Runesson, 2017). The core of the learning studyis an object of learning, that is a certain capability that the pupils should develop (Pang &Runesson, 2019). During the research process, the understanding and teaching of the object of learning are improved through the analysis of pre- and post-tests and interventions. Our objectof learning is “finding relevant information in a news article in order to produce a short radioreport”, and the research questions involve identifying the critical aspects that the pupils needto discern to read the article purposefully, and consequently, designing teaching that supportsthe pupils’ understanding of these critical aspects.So far, we have carried out one cycle of pre-test, intervention, and post-test. Collected dataconsist of audio recordings of pre- and post-test radio reports, pupils’ notes from pre- and posttests, and video-recordings of the classroom intervention. Based on the tests, we haveformulated the following preliminary critical aspects (i.e. aspects of the learning object that thepupils need to discern):• see why the text constitutes a piece of news• see that not all information is relevant for the task• see that relevant information can be found anywhere in the text• see that the reported information should be correct• see that the report does not include new information or personal opinions

The paper contributes to the discussion about all-round communicative competence in EFLteaching and learning by exploring reading for a specific purpose that goes beyond merecomprehension. 

ReferencesCarlgren, I., Eriksson, I., & Runesson, U. (2017). Learning study. In I. Carlgren (Ed.)Undervisningsutvecklande forskning – exemplet Learning Study (pp. 17-30). Gleerups.Pang, M.F. and Runesson, U. (2019). The Learning study: recent trends anddevelopments. International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 8(3), 162-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLLS-07-2019-093Skolverket (2023). Resultat på de nationella proven i årskurs 3, 6 och 9. Läsåret 2022/23.[Report]. Retrieved from www.skolverket.se

Skolverket (2024). Curriculum for compulsory school, preschool class and school-age educare– Lgr22. Retrieved from www.skolverket.se 

This chapter presents the collaborative research project ‘From monologues to dialogues’. The project included several small-scale classroom studies conducted by a research team of teachers and researchers. The collaboration encompassed all stages of the project (design, implementation and analysis), which combined theory and practice to produce findings relevant for the teaching profession. The project was grounded in a practice-based problem: How do we get the pupils to talk to each other in the target language in the classroom? The research team hypothesized that the issue might lie with oral classroom activities and that the problem could be solved by designing meaningful tasks aimed at promoting co-constructed interaction. Our findings related to task design indicate that problem-based tasks with brief instructions and artefacts can elicit ‘good interaction’, which–with the analytical affordances of conversation analysis–we empirically defined as co-constructed interaction where pupils attend to each other’s turns-at-talk and formulate fitting turns that foster the progressivity of the activity. Challenges in our collaboration included negotiating different expectations and perspectives; we argue, however, that the benefits outweigh the challenges. Most importantly, by working side by side in the research process our research team has produced findings that are both actionable and sustainable for the teaching profession.

This study addresses a pedagogical practice-based issue, that is, difficulties with eliciting student–student co-constructed oral interaction in the EFL classroom. The study was conducted with a bottom-up approach to pedagogical research through the close collaboration of teachers and researchers who were equal partners in the research team. It was observed that students often engage in parallel monologues or unauthentic question–response sequences when accomplishing oral activities; thus, the research team aimed to design tasks providing opportunities for meaningful, co-constructed talk. The research design involved an iteration of task design and classroom testing in three cycles, and the student–student interaction was analyzed using conversation analysis. Findings show that the divergent problem-based task designed in this process did elicit purposeful and collaborative oral interaction, as the students engaged in co-constructed talk by visibly attending to each other’s turns-at-talk and by formulating fitting turns that fostered the progressivity of the activity. The task also included artifacts (i.e., material objects), the manipulation of which played an important role in the emerging collaborative interaction. These findings suggest that the implementation of open-ended problem-based tasks can develop students’ interactional competence, while the use of artifacts can help students make their reasoning tangible and visually accessible.

Research has shown that classroom-based reading strategy training does not necessarily result in effective, self-regulated reading behaviours when students engage with authentic academic reading in their own study contexts. In light of this problem, our study examines the effects of an instructional scaffold combined with teacher feedback, designed to foster students’ self-regulation in authentic academic reading contexts. Over a 5-week period, students read five academic texts and posted blog posts documenting their reading, scaffolded by a task prompt. In response, their teacher posted individualised feedback. The data comprised 75 student blog posts and 63 teacher responses. The results suggest that the task prompts and feedback supported students’ self-regulation in different ways: while the task prompted students to reflect on their reading, teacher feedback redirected students’ attention to new ways of reading and to less superficial aspects of the task, as well as reminding them of reading behaviours they had previously engaged in successfully. The study therefore provides insights into the interplay between task and feedback and recommendations for teaching practice.

This thesis investigates pupils’ learning about writing from giving feedback. Research on peer assessment and L2 writing is plentiful, but little attention has been given to younger learners and to potential benefits for the peer feedback provider. My project was carried out as two intervention studies with Swedish pupils in year 8. During the intervention, the pupils wrote two drafts of various genres (the reply letter, the newspaper article, and the argumentative essay), and the teaching involved a joint formulation of criteria lists, feedback training, and peer review in groups. Learning from giving feedback was operationalised as links between the revision changes made to the first draft and the peer feedback provision.

Results show that the pupils were able to produce relevant feedback on their peers’ writing. The inclusion of formative information, i.e. explanations and suggestions, varied between the groups and between the genres. In terms of learning, it was especially the macro-level of writing that benefitted from giving feedback, as the pupils paid attention to paragraphing and the content of their texts, among other things. The intervention was inspired by genre pedagogies, and the pupils in the second study who wrote texts in three different genres presented an emergent genre awareness. As regards micro-level aspects of writing, the pupils self-reported improved ability to proofread their own texts from having read and commented on peers’ writing.

The pedagogical discussion of the findings highlights the roles of genre pedagogy, feedback training, criteria, and the pupils in relation to my results and to pupil involvement in assessment-as-learning activities. In conclusion, this thesis suggests that involving pupils as instructional resources for each other and for the teacher requires the advancement of pupils as agents in the classroom practice.

This study investigates the reading strategies used by academically novice, but high proficiency L2 students of English enrolled in a teacher education programme at a major Swedish university. Data were obtained from personal reading blogs kept by the students as they undertook course reading at home. An analysis revealed that students employed various reading strategies; however, there was limited evidence to suggest that students employed these strategies routinely. The most common strategy reported was connecting to short-term writing task. While students reported reflecting on their reading, they did not appear to amend unsuccessful strategy use, or re-use successful strategies. The study reveals the difficulties and limitations of high proficiency L2 students who lack experience of reading academic literature in English, and discusses pedagogical implications for reading blogs.