Teaching English as a Foreign Language: To what extent is Nrowegian used in our English teaching today - and why?

Abstract

The aim of this thesis has been to find out whether using Norwegian rather than English in our English lessons is in fact the rule rather than the exception today, and to find out in which situations Norwegian is used and why. The starting point for the study was the belief that speaking English while teaching English is a must.

A questionnaire was sent to a selected number of schools, asking both qualified and unqualified teachers to answer questions connected to the theme mentioned above. This is not a representative study as such, but I believe that the results, to a certain extent, may point towards tendencies in the teaching of English in the Norwegian school system today. The results show that Norwegian is frequently used in the English teaching today, partly because if a high number of unqualified English teachers and partly because of the pupils' ability to understand. This happens in spite of what both foreign language learning theories, teacher trainers and L'97 say about the teaching language in foreign language teaching. The results are presented and analysed in detail in the thesis, showing when and why Norwegian is being used.