Does the Recommended Teaching Align with Best Practices forFostering Students’ Willingness to Communicate? : An Analysis of the English Subject Syllabus in Upper-Secondary School in Sweden

The important aspect of speaking in an L2 classroom is well-known for language acquisition to occur. But what happens when students, for whatever reason, are unwilling to communicate. In that case, teachers must apply different pedagogical practices to support them. With this in mind, this degree project essay aims to investigate the English syllabus in upper-secondary school in Sweden to explore what recommendations teachers are given to increase learners’ willingness to communicate orally. The analysis of the English syllabus is done using a constructed framework based on previous research on the best pedagogical practices to increase students’ willingness to communicate and explore if there is an alignment between the two. The findings show that the most often-included suggestions aligned with international best practices are: connecting the teaching to students’ knowledge and experiences, providing students with linguistic competence, and providing students with different interactional activities with different purposes. The essay will further give some pedagogical recommendations and future research directions