“The goal is to enable students to communicate”: Communicative competence and target varieties in TEFL practices in Sweden and Germany

2.1 English in Germany

Berns (1995: 9) assigns the Englishes of Europe (including Germany) to an “overlap area” between Kachru’s (1985) Outer and Expanding Circles, and Hilgendorf (2007) classifies it as an additional rather than a foreign language. While not an official language, Erling (2007: 120) reports that nowadays most university students are proficient in English, and this proficiency seems to be a characteristic criterion of “Germanness”. Children are taught a foreign language from year 1 or 3 in primary school, depending on the federal state they live in (Grau 2009: 161), and English is usually the first foreign language (Hilgendorf 2005). In higher education, the importance of English is also steadily growing, as it is increasingly being used as the medium of instruction (Erling and Hilgendorf 2006). Henderson et al. (2012: 21) show in their survey that RP is preferred over GA for both reception (91.19 % vs. 80.08 %) and production (91.19 % vs. 67.82 %).

Grau uses the terms “English from above” and “English from below” (as used by Preisler 1999 in Grau 2009: 161) to distinguish English taught in the classroom and English “playfully taken up by German youths and integrated into their own language” (Grau 2009: 163). German adolescents use English in a number of situations as it is ubiquitous in the media and an integral part of (European) youth culture (James 2000). Indeed, Erling (2007: 117) reports that “the most prevalent domain in which students are likely to read and write English is not at university [...] but [on] the internet”. This is a consequence of the internet having overtaken TV as the most frequently-used digital medium in the 14–49 age bracket in Germany (Statista 2018). Germans do not come into contact with English much when watching TV as, along with Italy and Spain, Germany is the leading dubbing nation in Europe (Goethe Institut 2018) and English-language TV programmes are usually only available with English-language audio on Netflix or via other streaming services (Fischl 2017). However, it is unclear whether and to what extent these original English versions are actually watched, since Germans are the European people that disfavour subtitled films the most (Eurobarometer 2006: 59).

While the importance of English as a lingua franca is also emphasised by Gnutzmann, Jakis and Rabe (2015: 181) in their study on attitudes towards multilingualism and English as a lingua franca among German university students, the participants in their study still felt the “ownership” of the English language to be with its native speakers. Thus, their participants clearly preferred native speaker norms in the form of BrE and AmE over a suggested new variety “Euro-English” (Gnutzmann, Jakis and Rabe 2015: 178). Euro-English was felt to be a bad imitation of “real” English and a superfluous artificial construct.

2.2 English in Sweden

In the 1990 s, fears were expressed in the media and by linguists that a continually increasing use of English would have negative effects on the Swedish language (see Boyd and Huss 2001; Bolton and Meierkord 2013). As a response, the government issued a report in 2002, giving suggestions for how the two languages can or should be used. For higher education, Swedish is maintained alongside English in order to ensure that speakers continue to use both, and that Swedish continues to develop in the domains of teaching and research (Swedish Government 2002a).

English became the primary foreign language in schools in 1962 (Sundqvist and Sylvén 2014: 4), and since 2011 children start learning it at age 7, in their first year of compulsory school (Swedish Government 2010a). It is the only compulsory language subject apart from Swedish, and passing English is a requirement for enrolment in upper secondary school (Sundqvist and Sylvén 2014: 5). The English syllabi in compulsory (years 1–9) and upper secondary (years 10–12) schools do not specify a variety to be taught, but rather focus on the pupil being able to communicate with a range of interlocutors in different social situations (Swedish Government 2010 a; 2010b). Prior to 1994, the curricula stated that BrE should be the taught variety (Modiano 2009: 66).

Swedish year 4 pupils use and are exposed to English outside of school more than during school hours (Sundqvist and Sylvén 2014: 17), through activities such as gaming, television and social networking. TV channels subtitle rather than dub imported television shows (apart from those aimed at very small children), and Swedes are thus exposed to English through their media consumption (Swedish Government 2002b). Some researchers, such as Hyltenstam (1999: 212) and Melander (2001: 13), argue that English in Sweden should be seen as a second rather than foreign language, due to its widespread use.

While 32.4 % of programmes aired on Sweden’s 11 television channels are produced in Sweden, 16.3 % are produced in the UK and 37.8 % in the USA (Asp 2016: 24). In addition, approximately half of the population report having access to and using on-demand streaming services; in the age group 9–19 that number is 81 % (The Swedish Press and Broadcasting Authority 2016 a; 2016b). The majority of the English that Swedish pupils hear in their spare time is closer to AmE, while their English teachers likely use something closer to BrE (Mobärg 2002: 129).

In Ribbås (2016), 54 upper secondary school pupils self-rated their proficiency for English reading, writing, speaking and understanding. Participants tended to self-report their ratings as 4 or 5 on a scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good); and 12 of them indicated that their English proficiency is just as high, or almost as high as their Swedish. Mobärg (2002) reports that Swedish pupils (years 7–9) prefer using BrE when speaking English, but that a large minority of tokens are produced using AmE features. There is some indication in Mobärg’s work that pupils tend towards BrE in more formal contexts; while AmE is associated with more informal speaking styles.

In Söderlund and Modiano’s (2002: 162) survey of 15 teachers, 57.1 % reported using BrE, and 28.5 % reported Mid-Atlantic English (MAE) when teaching; however, privately 71.4 % report using BrE, 14.2 % reported using MAE, and 14.2 % “modified RP”. Westergren Axelsson (2002: 142) further concludes that English teachers in 2000 seemed more open to pupils learning other varieties of English than they were in 1992.

2.3 Summary of English in Germany and Sweden

Both countries are Western European countries where speakers start learning English at an early age (before or by age 10). The countries also have in common the discussions on whether English should be considered a foreign or a second language. English proficiencies are rather high, somewhat more so in Sweden than in Germany, and English is an important language in higher education as well as in other contexts.

One of the main cultural differences in relation to the use of and exposure to English is through media and entertainment, whereby the German audience will experience most of the content produced in the English-speaking world dubbed into German; whereas the Swedish audience will be used to hearing the original English, and seeing subtitles in Swedish.

3.1 Questionnaire design and data collection procedure

TEFL strategies and practices among German and Swedish teachers were assessed using an online questionnaire^[2]. Part one of the questionnaire was aimed at determining possible institutional and informal influences gained before starting the profession (for example through schooling, including their teacher education), which may influence the teachers’ reported language use and language teaching practices. Teacher education and teaching experience questions were thus included in order to assess the amount of institutional training the participants had received, which might in turn influence the impact of official guidelines on their language teaching. Questions on the teachers’ language learning history were included in order to evaluate the influence of non-institutional factors, such as stays abroad and informal language acquisition, on the teachers’ language use in- and outside of the classroom. This has been shown to be influential, especially in terms of fluency (Trenchs-Parera 2009).

Part two of the questionnaire was intended to assess the current teaching practices of the participants in terms of target varieties. Thus, the language teaching practice questions enquired about official instructions concerning target varieties specifically, but also investigated different aspects of language varieties and their importance in the teachers’ language classrooms. The teachers’ private language use was assessed here, in order to find out whether and to what extent it plays a role for their language teaching.

The questionnaire did not include distractors, deemed unnecessary in a research design employing a direct method, i. e. asking for language attitudes and ideologies directly instead of employing a guised technique. Further, the participants were informed of the purpose of the study beforehand. The questionnaire was, prior to use, validated by colleagues and subsequently in a pilot phase (cf. also Artino et al. 2014). The pre-test contained 38 questions and was performed with 16 participants from Sweden and Germany, using the friend-of-a-friend approach (cf. Milroy 1980; Milroy and Gordon 2003).

The final version of the questionnaire contained 35 questions and several sub-questions. It was distributed via a link shared on social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and via e-mail to teachers known to the authors through collaborations with secondary schools, as well as to contacts working in connection to school environments. This method of distribution is similar to the friend-of-a-friend approach, with the possibility of recruiting a larger and more diverse participant pool than a traditional hard-copy questionnaire permits (Sue and Ritter 2012), but without control over the representativeness of the sample. The link was left open for 2 months and all participants who completed the questionnaire could participate in a lottery to win amazon.com gift vouchers.

3.2 Participants

As shown in Table 1, the 80-participant sample was relatively balanced with regard to nationality (34 German, 46 Swedish participants) and the participants were from different regions of Germany and Sweden. There are more female than male participants, especially in the German data set; this reflects the population of teachers. It should be noted that the Swedish participants had more teaching experience than the German ones, and that the Swedish teachers started learning English earlier than the Germans. The latter is attributable to the different educational policies with regard to English (see Section 2).

4.1 Private language use

Participants were asked to self-assess their English speaking competence on a scale from 1 (disfluent) to 8 (native-like). 43 Swedish participants rated themselves between 5 and 8, with an average of 7.23, and a mode of 7.30. German participants rated themselves between 4 and 8, with an average of 7.0, and a mode of 8.0

Responses to a combination of questions are needed to give a full picture of how the teachers acquired English. Participants were asked to estimate what percentage of the spoken and written English they had acquired in a formal education setting (cf. Grau 2009 “English from above”), as opposed to informal situations (cf. Grau 2009 “English from below”). Figure 1 shows written language self-ratings on the x-axis and spoken language ratings on the y-axis, with trend lines showing the correlation between the two modalities.

Figure 1

Teachers’ reported acquisition of written and spoken English in formal vs. informal settings (in percentage).

Both participant groups report that their written language skills are more influenced by formal education than their spoken skills; unpaired t-tests show no statistically significant difference in responses between the groups, meaning that they respond in similar ways. When testing the correlation between estimations of spoken and written English learned in a formal setting however, a Pearson’s r test shows that while there is only a weak correlation for the Swedish group (r=0.2614, p=0.0793), the correlation for the German group is moderate (r=0.5622, p=0.000665).

The German outlier in the bottom left corner rated their acquisition of English in formal settings fairly low. At the same time, this participant rates their speaking competence as very high. Looking at the other answers reveals that this speaker had lived in English-speaking countries for some time. The low formal acquisition ratings in combination with the high speaking competence rating most likely means that the speaker thinks they acquired most of their English in non-formal contexts when living abroad.

Responses to the multiple-choice question “Where or how did you learn English?” are shown in Figure 2. Multiple responses were possible, and are shown in percentages by country.

Figure 2

Teachers’ reports on where and how they learned English

The largest differences in Figure 2 are the categories “in an English-speaking country” and “in the classroom”. The latter corresponds to the results of the Pearson’s r test on formal/informal settings for the acquisition of English (Figure 1), whereas the former can be related to the fact that 27 Swedish (58.7 %) and 25 German (73.5 %) participants report having spent more than two months continuously in an English-speaking country, mainly in the UK (4 Swedes, 11 Germans) and the US (10 Swedes, 5 Germans). The number of responses for audio-visual media is slightly higher for the Swedish participants, however the difference between the two groups is fairly small. Three Swedish participants responded that they had learned English from an English-speaking family member while none of the German participants chose this option.

There is some variation shown in the responses to the question “Do you use a specific variety of English when speaking, privately?”.

While the majority report using BrE or AmE, 9 Swedish and 1 German participant report not using a specific variety. One Swedish participant reports using MAE, and one of the 17 Swedish respondents favouring AmE in fact report “According to me I have an American dialect, according to native-speaking friends I have a ‘Scandinavian academic dialect’.” (Swe27m).

Teachers were asked “Which aspects of your own pronunciation of English do you consider to be the most important?” (Table 3).

Participants appear to regard intonation as most important in terms of their own pronunciation. Articulation and segmental features are mentioned by 10 Swedes but only by two of the German participants, while 6 Germans and 2 Swedes mention authenticity, fluency, credibility or sounding natural or native. They were able to give as few or as many answers as they wanted, and as such no further analysis as to the frequencies is possible here.

4.2 Language use in the classroom

In terms of their teaching practices, 89.1 % of the Swedish and 73.5 % of the German participants reported that they had not been given official instructions to use a specific variety of English in their teaching. Three Swedish participants highlighted that the curriculum and the Department of Education require pupils to learn about different varieties of English. Two of the Swedish participants appear to limit the varieties available to them to two, BrE and AmE:

(1) “No, but I’ve heard that only British or American standardized varieties are accepted.” (Swe41f)

Two German participants state that BrE is the target variety, and one that it is recommended to use BrE, while two report that school books mainly use BrE. One reports that there are no longer instructions about the use of a particular variety, implying that there used to be at one point. In general, AmE and BrE are the varieties most often named in response to this question by the German participants (7 times).

Investigating the teachers’ own reported language use in the classroom, Table 4 shows responses to the questions “Which variety of English do you use when teaching speaking skills/writing skills?”.

The answers shown in Table 4 are comparable to results from Henderson et al. (2012), whereby teachers in Germany display a preference for RP, with GA rated slightly lower. While BrE and AmE are the most commonly-used varieties when teaching both speaking and writing skills, there is some variation: teachers are not always consistent across their teaching of different modalities; a fair few teachers from both countries use a mixture of BrE and AmE for both modalities; and quite a large proportion of the Swedish teachers report using a neutral or non-specific variety of English in teaching, while none of the Germans mention this. This is an issue that is particularly intriguing, as in private as well as in school, teachers state that they are able to switch between different varieties of English with ease.

Following up on the use of different varieties in teaching, participants were asked if they use native-speaker audio files in class, and if so, which varieties of English the speakers in the files use. Responses to this question showed some variation between teachers’ practices, with most stating that they used BrE (Sweden 20, Germany 19) or AmE (Sweden 20, Germany 17) speakers, but with some regional variation from these countries, including “not only standard varieties”, showing awareness of regional and/or social variation or not only interpreting “variety” as something connected to a specific country (cf. Milroy 2001). Among the Swedish participants, one included “immigrant backgrounds” and two mentioned “World Englishes”, and among the German participants there is mention of “non-native”, “immigrants to English-speaking countries” and French speakers, indicating that representations of non-native varieties of English feature in their teaching.

Teachers were further asked a number of questions concerning their pupils’ language skills and use. Just over half of the Swedish teachers (n=23) agreed that pupils are expected to choose and be consistent with any one variety of English for their own use, while 20 participants disagree. Some said it is encouraged but they do not strictly enforce it, some said they require consistency in writing but not in speaking, and one said they require it within a single text but not across different texts. 15 German teachers agreed that pupils should choose one variety and be consistent in its use while six participants disagreed, two said they would require consistency from older pupils but not at lower levels, one said pupils should be consistent but are not, and one that the teachers are not consistent either. There are indications that teachers view BrE and AmE as the only two varieties available to choose from, or at least, these are the only two specifically mentioned. Teachers were also asked to give an estimate of which varieties are the most popular among pupils (see Table 5).

Again, these results are comparable to those in Henderson et al. (2012), in which German teachers report pupils’ preferences to be slightly higher for GA than RP. One of the German participants stated that the pupils hardly think about which variety they use, but that they are influenced by exposure (Ger18f). Three Swedish participants mentioned contradicting patterns in variety usage among the pupils: older pupils use BrE, and younger ones AmE (Swe4o); older pupils use AmE (because of exposure outside the classroom), and younger ones BrE (because they are taught it at earlier levels) (Swe12f); and “When speaking, it is definitely American. The same pupil, however, might use British when writing.” (Swe7f). Furthermore, three Swedish participants stated that AmE is more popular than BrE, in line with the results (cf. Table 5).

To investigate which aspects of their teaching the teachers think are most important, they were asked to rank four skills by importance, where those ranked as #1 are “most important” and those ranked as #4 are “least important”. Figure 3 shows the responses for each skill: Communicative skills, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Figure 3 shows some minor differences between the teachers in the two countries: while the German participants ranked grammar and pronunciation as slightly more important than the Swedish participants did (grammar: on average 1.91 for Germany and 2.13 for Sweden; pronunciation: 1.82 for Germany and 2.13 for Sweden), the rankings for communicative skills and vocabulary indicated greater importance for all participants (communicative skills: average 1.24 for Germany and 1.22 for Sweden; vocabulary: 1.42 for Germany and 1.39 for Sweden). The mode values for all aspects were the same across both groups of participants: 1 for communicative skills and vocabulary, and 2 for grammar and pronunciation. Using a Mann-Whitney U test, the differences between responses by individuals in the two participant groups are shown not to be statistically significant for any of the four skills investigated here.

Figure 3

Percentage of participants’ rankings (1=most important, 4=least important) of each of the four skills, communication, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Responses are grouped by country of respondent origin. The number of respondents for each question is given in brackets.

Participants were further asked which approaches/methods they use for teaching these four skills, and responses were similar across the groups. Starting with pronunciation, most responses concerned letting pupils listen to native speakers (and sometimes to different accents), and many teachers used repetition exercises in class. A few reported using feedback/correcting pupils (sometimes specified as given individually), and especially the Swedish teachers reported that pupils are instructed to speak English as much as possible. Five Swedish and seven German teachers reported using the International Phonetic Alphabet or articulatory/phonetic instruction when teaching pupils about pronunciation.

With respect to grammar, most responses related to the use of worksheets or grammar textbooks containing exercises; for Sweden these seemed to be exclusively online resources. Many teachers mentioned using and practising grammatical constructions, and especially Swedish teachers specifically mentioned writing. Input in different forms seemed to be equally important to the two groups, with examples of listening, reading, films, and lectures being mentioned. A number of German teachers specified using inductive vs. deductive methods for the teaching of grammar.

For vocabulary, Swedish teachers seemed more focused on textual and audio input than German teachers, who reported using lexical chunks or different types of networking techniques, as well as games. Both groups reported using word lists; Germans report using exams/quizzes and flashcards more than the Swedes, who used online resources more.

For communicative skills, most respondents reported focusing on group/pair work and/or discussions in the classroom. Many German teachers especially reported using drama, role play or the acting out of real-life scenarios. A number of teachers in both groups reported using games, exercises and writing, as well as speeches and presentation type exercises in order to practice communicative skills with pupils.

Teachers were asked “Which aspects of their [the pupils’] pronunciation do you consider to be most difficult for students to learn and why? E.g. consonants, vowels, rhythm, intonation...” (see Table 6).

Further responses include five Swedish teachers stating that pupils do not have many problems regarding pronunciation in English, and five participants specifically state that pupils with other L1 backgrounds struggle more. This is echoed in the German results, where one participant writes: “Depends on the learner’s native language. The most difficult things to pronounce are always those outside their repertoire of native phonemes” (Ger32m). This question was in an open-answer format, and occurrences of mentions have been counted; this means that table 6 only gives an overview. The participants were then asked in what ways they work with pupils on the aspects of pronunciation they deem are the most difficult (Table 7).

Most participants report using listen-and-repeat type exercises with their pupils, or letting pupils practice in different ways, such as by self-recordings. While 10 Swedish participants report using exposure to native or model speakers as a way of allowing pupils to practice, this is rarely practiced by German teachers. Two German participants further report that there is very little time to work on these things, and that it is the least important aspect of their teaching.

In addition to pronunciation, participants were asked whether they introduce pupils to grammatical structures from varieties other than BrE or AmE, and whether these would be allowed as correct variants on a test. The question seemed to trigger some reflection on what variation is and its role in the classroom, as well as what is accepted from an L2 speaker of English in a Swedish or German learning environment.

(2) “Probably not, but that’s more because I would not recognize them (due to limits in my own experience of all the different varieties of English). Also, I feel that as second language speakers it’s probably more relevant to learn a more ‘general’ English. It would be odd for a Swedish student to learn Jamaican Patois – unless of course that student planned to move there or something.” (Swe25m)

(3) to my mind students should be consistent in the variant they use, which is usually either British or American (it’d be different if I knew the student was part Irish or Nigerian or whatever and I could trust that their English is a native speaker’s English)” (Ger29f)

Here, some teachers also reported that even if the structure in question was unknown to the teacher, they would allow it if the pupil could show it is correct. They thereby show a willingness to bring other, more non-standard, forms into the classroom. This willingness is further supported by the similar responses given to questions surrounding the teaching of vocabulary; on the question whether they teach both BrE and AmE variants an overwhelming majority respond affirmatively. Only two Swedish teachers said “no” or “not applicable”, without expanding on their response.

Concerning a European English variety (Euro-English) to be used in their own teaching, neither Swedes nor Germans seem in favour of the idea (participants responding “no”: Sweden 25, Germany 16). The main concern among teachers seems to be that this is a variety they do not know and would have to learn prior to being able to teach it – this in fact comes up both among those who are opposed to the idea, and those who are not. The arguments against using Euro-English are similar for the two countries: participants say it is artificial or constructed, and that authentic or native anglophone targets should be used instead. Some of the teachers’ arguments are listed below:

(4) “That would be another example of things being intentionally dumbing things down [sic] to accommodate incompetence rather than using proper means of making the incompetent competent, such as proper training and demanding effort” (Ger32m)

(5) “English should be as close to native speaking varieties as possible and selling a few new structures, specific vocabulary or proverbs as a new variety will simply water down the standard of language teaching and acquisition” (Ger17m)

(6) “Politicized ‘management’ of language has largely failed for the last 3000 years, and inventing/teaching any such variety is for people living in a decontextualized realm of short-term historical memory.” (Swe26m)

(7) “No. (This is a largely outdated concept. Global English took over long ago in the real world.)” (Swe22f)

At the end of the questionnaire, participants were given space to comment on the questionnaire or any aspect of it in case they wanted to provide feedback. This following comment illustrates a recurrent theme in the results viz., that participants are apparently aware of a change in teaching practices and agree that variety-centered approaches are no longer up to date:

(8) “This questionnaire seems to center on varieties of English which seems odd to me. This is (by far) the least important aspect of teaching English. The goal is to enable students to communicate. Even a total confusion of all varieties of English would be acceptable as long as it gets the job (successful communication) done. I am aware that this has not always been the case in German educational doctrine but there has been a push in that direction in recent years and for once, that’s a change that I agree with.” (Ger26m)