Swedish students’ beliefs about learning English in and outside of school

In Sweden students’ encounters with English in and out of school are very different. Spending around 20 hours per week in English-mediated environments outside of school, they are often engaged in richly meaningful activities. Consequently, many young people believe they learn as much of their English as a result of participation in English-mediated leisure time activities as they do from textbook-dominated classroom instruction. Drawing on emerging discussions on the ways in which learners’ beliefs about the primacy of learning English in natural environments can have negative effects on learning behaviours in formal settings (e.g. Mercer & Ryan, 2010), and how learners’ beliefs about the causes of success in language learning can impact on motivation (e.g. Hsieh, 2012), this chapter examines the ways in which such beliefs may impact on Swedish students’ responses to classroom learning. Further, in view of the fact that beliefs about the context in which English is mostly acquired differ substantially between girls and boys, the chapter examines the ways in which gender differences in the nature of self-regulation can impact on students’ beliefs.