Search results for "Teaching Method."
showing 10 items of 407 documents
Teachers’ views on differentiation in content and language integrated learning (CLIL): Perceptions, practices and challenges
2012
The present study investigates differentiation in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Finland. Specifically, this combination of a qualitative case study and quantitative survey examines (1) primary teachers’ perceptions of differentiation, (2) the differentiation methods specific to CLIL education the teachers use and (3) the challenges of differentiation they identify. The qualitative phase was conducted in a school which offers CLIL education also to pupils with special needs following the principles of inclusive education. The results revealed that the teachers (n = 51) perceived differentiation in somewhat different ways. In general, the teachers differentiated their CLI…
English Pronunciation Teaching: Four Case Studies from Finland
2012
The present study looks at how English pronunciation teaching practices are like in Finnish schools from the primary to upper secondary level; in particular, which methods are used and which items are emphasised. The study was carried out as focussed observations (Hopkins 2008, p. 89), as classroom observations were considered the best way to achieve the aim of this study. Four EFL teachers were each observed for 6–9 lessons within a period of one week. A pre-prepared observation form was used as a tool, and then developed into a categorisation of the teaching methods used by the observed teachers. As for the results, the teachers offered pronunciation teaching very different from each othe…
Speaking English in Finnish content-based classrooms
2007
: CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is a term widely used in Europe to refer to different forms of content based education, often conducted in English. Earlier research on CLIL has tended to focus on matters of language learning or content mastery rather than on details of classroom interaction. This paper investigates how English is used in Finnish biology and physics CLIL classrooms. Classrooms are approached from a discourse-pragmatic perspective which involves close attention to social and interpersonal aspects of language use as it unfolds in authentic settings. The findings suggest that CLIL students claim ownership of English by the way they confidently use it as a res…
Directionality in translation and revision teaching: a case study of an A–B teacher working with B–A students
2019
Directionality has seldom been discussed with regard to the profiles of translation teachers. At German universities, the target language is usually the teacher’s A language. By contrast, in countr...
Creating a bilingual pre-school classroom: the multilayered discourses of a bilingual teacher
2015
Teachers have an agentive role as they interpret, evaluate and develop language policies and practices. In the current study we interviewed a bilingual pre-school teacher in Finland during the first year of implementing a new way of working bilingually with a class of monolingual children. Applying nexus analysis, we explored the teacher discourses on the trajectory of the development of the new approach; the concepts, places and people that were circulating in her reflections; and how these connected with larger societal discourses. The analysis showed that the teacher's new bilingual language practices demanded the renegotiation of previously held personal and professional beliefs. The te…
“You Can Stand Under My Umbrella”: Immersion, CLIL and Bilingual Education. A Response to Cenoz, Genesee & Gorter (2013)
2014
Classrooms the world over are full of people who, for different reasons, are learning additional languages and/or are studying through languages that are not their first. Gaining insight into such contexts is complicated for researchers and practitioners alike by the myriad of contextual variables that come with different implementations and make comparison and generalization a tricky business. We welcome Cenoz et al.’s (2013) article as an important contribution to the debate on how best to tackle this problem. In this Forum piece we would like to, however, redress the balance on two issues: the fact that terminologies have histories and the emphases on the research agenda suggested for fu…
Two languages in the air : a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices
2016
Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew context) and interviewed the teachers about their use of languages in the classroom. We found that in each context the teachers reported modifications to an initial bilingual education model over time: from a strict separation of languages, to flexible b…
Retrospective Orientation to Learning Activities and Achievements as a Resource in Classroom Interaction
2018
This article explores the temporal nature of language learning in classroom settings through the lens of Conversation Analysis (CA) by drawing on video‐recorded interactions from Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) classrooms. It outlines some methodological challenges that the task of documenting language learning in and as observable social interaction poses for CA studies of second language (L2) learning and proposes that learning has typically been described as either a situated activity (in cross‐sectional studies) or a series of intermediate achievements (in longitudinal studies). The empirical analysis focuses on interactional instances in which students observably invoke and desc…
Competency-based Teaching of Shakespeare: How to Master King Lear
2011
Shakespeare’s hypotext has invited so many hypertextual transformations over the last four hundred years that twenty-first century students deserve the chance of digging into this rich mine of information and dramatic possibilities. The practical approach of a competency-based teaching method offers great advantages over traditional practices in that it devises a series of specific tasks for students to perform. As a result, their linguistic, historical, theatrical and intercultural skills are enhanced to such an extent that they acquire the competence they need to approach other early modern texts in a confident manner. This paper suggests a variety of tasks which can help students achieve…
Boosting Reading Fluency: An intervention case study at subword level
2007
This study is an intervention case study of fluency in Finnish‐speaking children with dyslexia. Two 7‐year‐old children, a girl and a boy, were selected from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The intervention emphasised syllables as reading units, and proceeded from reading syllables to reading words and text. Letter knowledge, reading skills (syllables, words, pseudowords, and text reading), and syllable segmentation of words were measured before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention. The results showed that the intervention mainly affected fluency at the syllable level. The girl also showed some improvements in fluency (accuracy, speed) at the word and te…