This study reports on some of the multifaceted challenges faced by both teachers and pupils in teaching and learning English in multicultural and multilingual classrooms, with an emphasis on the impact of pupils' proficiency in their second language (L2) on their ability to acquire a third language (L3). The study seeks to contribute to the research field, specifically concentrating on upper secondary schools in Sweden.

The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews. The participants were six teachers at upper secondary school and six pupils that attend upper secondary school in different parts of Sweden. The sociocultural theory by Vygotsky provided the theoretical framework for analyzing the data. This study includes both teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions, which contributes to broadening the field of research, since conducted research has previously for the most part focused on teachers’ perceptions. Therefore, the results of study differ in some matters from the results of previous research. The results show that there are many challenges experienced by both the teachers and the pupils that participated in the study when teaching and learning English in the multicultural and multilingual classroom. The participants particularly mentioned cultural clashes as a challenge. All of the teachers mentioned that they experience communication difficulties when teaching English in their EFL-classrooms and described this as a challenge. This was also mentioned as a challenge by the interviewed pupils. This study shows that the challenges of teaching and learning English in an EFL-classroom are many, and that this field requires further investigation.