Hur fyra gymnasielärare möter ideal och verklighet
En jämförelse mellan främmandespråksundervisning i Sverige och Australien
This degree project shows how four language teachers teach foreign languages with focus oncommunicative competence, and how their vision of teaching correspond to their reality in the classroom. How do they motivate the students in class and are the conditions good enough tohelp the teachers reach the national goals? A teacher?s vision is formed by his or her education and experiences. However, there are a number of factors which can help or hinder a teacher to reach his or her ideal teaching. Among these factors are the curriculum, the preknowledgeof the students and available technical resources. The method used in this thesis is qualitative interviews with two Australian and two Swedish foreign language teachers. This method was chosen in order to give the interviewees the possibility to speak more freely about their vision compared to their reality. The results show that there are more similarities than differences between Sweden and Australia when we look at the teachers? ideals. There are anumber of factors why the teachers do not reach their ideals. The findings show that it is necessary with adequate teacher training to uphold qualitative language teaching corresponding to continuously changing curriculums. Moreover, the curriculum mentions communicative language teaching more and more today, but the teachers experience difficulties when teaching and evaluating communicative competence. Another important issue is the lack of money and time for starting and maintaining international exchanges.