ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on German teenagers and their contact with English in two different contexts: in free‐time activities typically involving the mass media, and in institutionalised language learning settings at school. It draws on an empirical study carried out in German secondary schools. Its mixed methods approach combines a questionnaire study and focus group interviews with 15‐year‐old students and English teachers. The main aim of the enquiry was to find out how teenagers experience learning English in school in the light of their exposure to the language in their free time. Another focus lies on the teachers' perceptions of their students' contact with English outside school and on their practice in the classroom as to whether and how they use this experience in class. The data suggests that out‐of‐class contact with English is often not integrated into the EFL classroom. Thus, the classroom and the students' free time seem to be, by and large, two separate spheres, involving different methods of exposure to English in terms of text types, topics, activities, and language varieties.
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