“…Despite a long foreign language tradition for English education ( Simensen, 1999 ), in the early 2000s, learning English increasingly came to be viewed as resembling first language (L1) learning and as L2 learning in school ( Simensen, 2003 , 2005 ). Research suggests that, despite a predominantly functional view of English, tensions exist among: a) English for developing literacy (Hellekjær, 2008) and learning content ( Mahan, 2020 ; Mahan et al., 2018 ), b) English for more situated use ( Chvala, 2012 , Chvala, 2018 ; Rødnes, Hellekjær, & Vold, 2014 ), and c) English as a lingua franca (ELF) as a less legitimate and “hybrid” form ( Hild, 2018 ). An exploration of learners’ sociolinguistic practices in school have revealed underlying ideological tensions and exposed the need for more research on the meaning of “English” in a Norwegian school context ( Rindal, 2014 ).…”