Search results for "language education"

Putting Bits and Pieces Together: Awareness of Text Structure in Jigsaw Reading

2013

Issues concerning Language Awareness have been debated for about 40 years (Hawkins 1999) and have brought about many interesting developments in the area of language teaching and learning. In the following text, the official definition and scope of language awareness studies are briefly presented. Then, language awareness within the framework of foreign text comprehension—a crossroad where different types of knowledge, linguistic and non-linguistic, and a variety of cognitive processes meet and interact—is discussed. Since text comprehension is such a complex process, it requires the readers to use various forms of language awareness. The study reported in the second part of the paper was d…

Progress in language teaching

2018

The Early Bird gets the Word

2019

Success in an increasingly globalized world sets requirements for versatile communication skills and understanding about other cultures. One of the keys to success is versatile language skills, on which the European Commission spoke out as early as in 1995, recommending that every European citizen should learn two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue. Now, more than twenty years later, the launch of early A1 language teaching that is to begin in the first grade in Finland, in January 2020, is a significant step towards this goal. Studies show that early foreign language learning needs to be carefully carried out in order to achieve positive effects and the effects that have …

Language Education Policies and Early Childhood Education

2020

This chapter discusses the importance of different types of early language education in the public system according to national policy in two geopolitical contexts: Continental Northern Europe and the UK. We define early language education policy as the language policies in early childhood education (ECE) including planning, practices, and ideologies related to the teaching and learning of languages. We present a variety of theoretical approaches and discuss their applicability to the field of early language education research. These approaches include traditional top-down policy implementation models as well as more dynamic and ecological theoretical approaches. Following that, we look at …

Teacher development through language-related innovation in a decentralised educational system

2021

This study explores how early childhood education and basic education teachers develop and develop innovations within the decentralised educational system of Finland. The comprehensive dataset of 20 field interviews provides a range of insights into teachers’ goals, principles, inspirations and experiences when working with a variety of language-based innovations across Finland. The ecological perspective employed in the study highlights the complex relationships between the different ecosystems of education. With the particular focus on the educator-exosystem relationship, the findings indicate how Finnish teachers respond to the expectation to continuously develop and innovate as key chan…

Language orientations in early childhood education policy in Finland and Norway

2021

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article investigates the language orientations in education policy documents for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland and Norway. Finland, an officially bilingual country, and Norway, a predominantly monolingual country, share similar views on ECEC. However, the ECEC field in both c…

Corpus linguistics and its aplications in higher education

2010

The aim of this paper is to review and analyse relevant factors related to the implementation of corpus linguistics (CL) in higher education. First we set out to describe underlying principles of CL and its developments in relation to theoretical linguistics and its applications in modern teaching practices. Then we attempt to establish how different types of corpora have contributed to the development of direct and indirect approaches in language teaching. We single out Data Driven Learning (DDL) due to its relevance in applied linguistics literature, and examine in detail advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we outline problems concerning the implementation of CL in the classroom since awar…

As much English as possible : A study on two secondary school English teachers language use and the motives behind their language choices

2009

 Kommunikatiivisen kompetenssin ja suullisen kielitaidon painoarvo vieraiden kielten oppimisessa ja opettamisessa on kasvanut viime vuosina, mikä on lisännyt huomiota myös opettajien kielenkäyttöön. Tämän proseminaaritutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää, minkä verran englannin opettajat käyttävät tunneillaan englantia ja suomea ja miten he perustelevat kielivalintojaan. Taustana käytettiin teoreettista keskustelua kohdekielen ja äidinkielen hyödyistä kohdekielen oppimisen kannalta sekä aiempia tutkimustuloksia opettajien kielenkäytöstä. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostui kahdesta videokuvatusta kahdeksannen luokan englannin tunnista ja tunnit pitäneiden opettajien haastatteluista. Toisella ope…

Using music in EFL teaching at lower secondary education : teachers' experiences and opinions

2010

HUMANISTINEN TIEDEKUNTA KIELTEN LAITOS Hanna Pasanen USING MUSIC IN EFL TEACHING AT LOWER SECONDARY EDUCATION: TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS Pro Gradu -tutkielma Englannin kieli Huhtikuu 2010 80 sivua + 3 liitettä Musiikki on tärkeä osa murrosikäisen nuoren elämää. Se mahdollistaa erilaisten tunteiden läpikäymisen turvallisesti omien suosikkilaulujen kautta ja erilaiset harraste- ja faniryhmät antavat yhteenkuuluvuuden tunnetta ja ovat nuorille tärkeitä harrastuksia. Musiikkia voidaan myös käyttää englannin opetuksessa – musiikin eri sarat ovat lähes pohjaton lähde autenttiselle, ajankohtaiselle ja nuoria koskettavalle opetusmateriaalille. Kuitenkin sitä, missä määrin englannin opettaj…

The English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey : Factors Inside and Outside the Classroom

2015

In the past two decades, a number of studies have looked at how English pronunciation is taught, focusing on teaching practices, materials, training and attitudes to native speaker models from both the teachers’ and the learners’ perspective. Most of these studies have been conducted in English-speaking countries such as the USA (Murphy, 1997), Great Britain (Bradford and Kenworthy, 1991; Burgess and Spencer, 2000), Canada (Breitkreutz, Derwing and Rossiter, 2001; Foote, Holtby and Derwing, 2011), Ireland (Murphy, 2011) and Australia (Couper, 2011; Macdonald, 2002). In Europe, pronunciation teaching has been studied in Spain (Walker, 1999) and, more recently, in Finland (Tergujeff, 2012, 20…