Mid Sweden University

This study has examined the proficiency of Swedish students in English writing by comparing two sets of essays by 15-year-old students, one written by Swedish ninth grade students and the other written by Scottish fourth year secondary students. The grammar, spelling, syntax of these essays were assessed with the goal to determine inaccuracies per 100 words, and the number of K1-2, K3-24 and offlist words were determined to see how advanced the students’ vocabulary was.

All in all, it seems clear that while some students seem to be able to reach a Scottish average in terms of how much they use advanced words and create correct sentences, the Swedish students overall are clearly less proficient than native speakers, even if the margin may be small. Within each field there are students who are much less proficient even the Swedish average and the areas of spelling, syntax and to some extent grammar is where the greatest differences appear. None of the essays were consistently the best across the four categories, however, and instead some of the most lexically advanced essays had the most spelling inaccuracies and vice versa.

Due to the limited scope of this study, as well as the inability to collect essays within identical topics, many of the conclusions reached must be considered tentative. As previously mentioned there has been no possibility to account for student motivation or hobbies, nor socioeconomic background. Further studies should seek to account for these variables and expand the corpora collected.

The main conclusions of this study is, tentatively, that while some Swedish students are in some areas equal to ENL speakers the majority are somewhat less proficient and that a smaller group are much less proficient in English. The most proficient students, however, were so in the areas of lexis and syntax but often had many grammar and spelling issues, meaning that should be where they should focus their efforts.