D-paper English linguistics autumn 1999. The aims of this paper were to find out teachers’ attitudes towards formality and informality in the classroom and where they place their own teaching on a formal-informal scale. Part of the aim was also to see if there were any differences in attitudes between British and Swedish teachers and if they had incorporated new findings in the area of language teaching and learning in their own teaching. A survey of previous research was carried out which showed that both formal and informal learning situations have their advantages and limitations. A questionnaire was handed out to 43 language teachers in Britain and Sweden. The results of this survey showed that teachers believe a natural environment, or a mixture of formal and informal methods to be the best for language learning. It was also found that teachers aim to use the target language in the classroom as much as possible and that they think formal instruction is an important part of language learning. British and Swedish teachers differed in their attitudes towards changing their teaching methods. Swedish teachers claimed that they had become more informal in their teaching and that they planned to become even more informal in the future. Most British teachers also stated that they had changed but some said they had not. A majority of British teachers did not plan to change the methods used in the classroom to make it more natural; in fact some even said they planned to become more formal in the future.