Search results for "Englannin kieli"
showing 10 items of 390 documents
A comparative analysis on Finnish and Korean high school English textbooks in the perspective of communicative language teaching
2016
English textbooks are a key resource for English courses in both Finnish and Korean high schools. The present study aims to compare the similarities and differences of Finnish and Korean high school English textbooks and analyze them from the perspective of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) on which English textbooks of both countries are theoretically based. Two English textbooks have been selected from each country for this research. One textbook is targeted for 10th grade and the other for 11th grade. The textbooks have been analyzed according to six dimensions: textbook structure, vocabulary, language forms, topics and cultural backgrounds, communicative functions, and activities fo…
Teacher Educators’ Professional Identity in English-Medium Instruction at a Finnish University
2021
Publisher Copyright: © 2021, University of Ljubljana. All rights reserved. Although different forms of English-medium instruction (EMI) are being recognised, the different ways in which EMI can impact the pedagogical activities and expertise of higher education educators have received less attention. Using face-to-face and written interviews with nine teacher educators at a Finnish university, this study examines the most important aspects teacher educators perceive in their work through EMI and how these aspects connect to the understanding of their professional identity. The study is theoretically premised on the interconnected concepts of pedagogical doing, pedagogical being, pedagogical…
Investigating young Finnish CLIL pupils’ perceptions of foreign language use through visual narratives
2022
Abstract This article explores how pupils in early CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) education perceive language skills and use. The participants were 25 French-medium and 16 English-medium CLIL pupils in Grade 2 (aged 8 years). They had received CLIL education since the 1st Grade. The data were visual narratives drawn by the pupils and some associated open-ended questions they answered in writing. The data were analyzed using visual and content analysis. The results show that the pupils’ perceptions of language were a combination of traditional and modern views of language. The pupils compartmentalized the different languages as separate entities. They mostly saw language bei…
Student-initiated multi-unit questions in EMI classrooms
2021
This conversation analytic study investigates student-initiated multi-unit questions (MUQs) in whole class interaction. Based on a corpus of 30 hours of videotaped interactions from teacher education classrooms in an English-medium instruction university, we demonstrate that students use MUQs to introduce topics, either by recontextualizing some aspect of the prior topic, or alternatively, without these cohesive ties, which requires more interactional work to achieve intersubjectivity. Findings reveal that MUQs render student professional concerns more relevant and salient, foregrounding those inquiries as a space for launching topics. Students bring up issues such as ways of handling parti…
Ambivalent English : What We Talk About When We Think We Talk About Language
2020
The ambivalence of English manifests itself in the discourses that surround it. English may be a resource and consume resources; it empowers and oppresses. The dichotomous discussion around the usefulness or dangers of English as a “global” or “world” language erases problematizations of the layered societal implications of English in localised contexts. English needs to be analysed not (only) as a language but (also) as the ideologies and societal structures intertwined with it. We examine English in two higher education contexts. Our first case deals with the so-called Accent Reduction courses offered for international students in US universities. The second one analyses English as a lang…
Exploring the cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills in Spanish to English in the context of a computer adaptive reading intervention
2017
ABSTRACTWe explore the potential of a computer-adaptive decoding game in Spanish to increase the decoding skills and oral reading fluency in Spanish and English of bilingual students. Participants were 78 first-grade Spanish-speaking students attending bilingual programs in five classrooms in Texas. Classrooms were randomly assigned to the treatment (i.e., where students played Graphogame Spanish) for 16 weeks for ten minutes per day (n = 3) versus business as usual instruction (n = 2). Results indicate that students at some risk on Spanish pseudoword reading appeared to benefit the most from playing the game. Analysis of gains suggests a potentially small, but meaningful educational effect…
Towards more learning-centred English-medium education: promoting the combination of backward design and community of practice in teacher training
2022
Purpose Teaching in English-medium education (EME) requires mastery of content and ability to teach in a multilingual setting, but also pedagogical expertise and didactic agility. However, there is an apparent lack of proper training of EME teachers, who are typically experts of their field, but not necessarily equipped to design and implement EME. Moreover, there is still an evident gap with respect to understanding how EME teachers turn curricula into actual teaching and students’ learning. By addressing this gap, the present study provides recommendations for EME teacher training. Approach Finland, with its long EME traditions, was the present study’s context. Data saturation, i.e. adequ…
L2 English vocabulary breadth and knowledge of derivational morphology : One or two constructs?
2022
Derivational morphology (DM) and how it can be assessed have been investigated relatively rarely in language learning and testing research. The goal of this study is to add to the understanding of the nature of DM knowledge, exploring whether and how it is separable from vocabulary breadth. Eight L2 (second or foreign language) English DM knowledge measures and three measures of the size of the English vocabulary were administered to 120 learners. We conducted two confirmatory factor analyses, one with one underlying factor and the other treating vocabulary breadth and DM as separate. As neither model had a satisfactory fit without introducing a residual covariance to the two-factor model,…
Language ideological landscapes for students in university language policies: inclusion, exclusion, or hierarchy
2022
Many universities in non-English speaking countries have been adopting English as a medium of instruction to internationalize their education. We set out to compare the language policies of a Finnish and a Japanese university using the lens of language ideology – a set of normative beliefs about the social dimension of language. Data were collected from selected documents of the two universities, and analyzed utilizing critical discursive psychology. This social constructionist approach allows mapping out language ideological landscapes – interrelationships among different co-occurring language ideologies – from which students may draw ideas about how they orient themselves towards their pe…
Language practices in primary schools [in Nairobi] : the teachers' perspectives
2010
ABSTRACT Otieno, Suzanne Adhiambo. LANGUAGE PRACTICES IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN NAIROBI: THE TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES. A Pro Gradu Thesis in Special Education, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Educational Sciences, 2010. 84 pages. Unpublished Literacy is facilitated by the readiness to comprehend fluently written language and this requires accurate and fluent basic reading skills, good mastery of the language to be read and a lot of practice in reading the particular language. Basic reading skills involve the ability to pronounce written words accurately and this requires appropriate teaching instructions in a language most familiar to the pupils. Research has found that learning to read in…