“Words are picked up along the way” – Swedish EFL teachers’ conceptualizations of vocabulary knowledge and learning

Vocabulary is a core feature of language proficiency, requiring explicit attention in the classroom. As teachers’ conceptualizations influence their teaching, understanding vocabulary deserves closer attention. Yet, few teacher cognition studies focus on vocabulary, and even fewer non-native vocabulary. This paper presents an interview study with Swedish EFL teachers at secondary school level. Fourteen were interviewed about beliefs practices relation to development The shows that despite general importance learning among teachers, was not seen as objective its own right. Closely connected this understanding, showed great reliance incidental learning, where words understood “picked up along way” while doing other things, such reading playing games. It also found although awareness many aspects involved word knowledge, they mentioned methods work them. suggests need for more instruction