The present study explores ESL teachers’ ideas about target language use in the classroom, as well as factors that affect ESL learners’ willingness to communicate in the target language in Swedish classroom contexts. Data were collected through interviews with two ESL teachers at two different secondary schools, and a questionnaire distributed to 118 ESL learners in years 7 and 8 at the same schools. Teacher interviews revealed that beliefs about target language use differs somewhat between the two teachers, but that the common denominator is a strife for inclusive education while aiming to use the target language as widely as possible. Questionnaire results provide a complex and multifaceted picture of factors which affect learners’ willingness to communicate in the target language: attitudes toward the English subject, motivation to learn the language, self-perceived communicative competence, confidence, language anxiety and/or public speech anxiety, and other social factors such as classroom climate and group dynamic all interact to affect learners’ target language use.