Search results for "proficiency"

Vironkielisten osallistujien kielitaito Yleisten kielitutkintojen suomen kielen testissä 

2021

Tarkastelemme tässä artikkelissa vironkielisten suomen oppijoiden osallistumista Suomen kansallisen kielitestin, Yleisten kielitutkintojen, keskitason tutkintoon ja heidän kielitaitoprofiiliaan tutkintotulosten valossa. Vertaamme tuloksia yleiseen tutkintomenestykseen sekä osallistujien taustaan ja pohdimme suomen kielen asemaa oppimisen kohteena vironkielisten näkökulmasta. Analyysimetodina käytämme kuvailevaa tilastollista analyysia sekä tilastollista päättelyä. Tulokset osoittavat, että vironkieliset osallistujat menestyvät tutkinnossa hyvin ja erityisesti ymmärtämistaidot ovat tutkitussa ryhmässä vahvat. Vaikka aiemman tutkimuksen valossa suomen kielen taidon tason onkin nähty riippuvan…

A pluriliteracies approach to content and language integrated learning – mapping learner progressions in knowledge construction and meaning-making

2015

Over the past decades content and language integrated learning (CLIL) research has predominantly focused on the language proficiency of CLIL learners. The results are very promising and show that working language skills in learners, especially reading and listening skills, can be improved through a CLIL programme. Studies focusing on subject learners are still few but they indicate that learners maintain or under certain conditions can improve their subject learning when compared to learners learning in L1. However, more recent studies have raised challenging questions concerning academic language competence which indicate that CLIL instruction may not be reaching its full potential. Unrave…

Book review: Criterial Features in L2 English: Specifying the Reference Levels of the Common European Framework

2015

Student beliefs (or metacognitive knowledge) about SLA reconsidered

1995

In applied linguistics, interest in student beliefs (or metacognitive knowledge) about second language acquisition (SLA) is fairly recent, growing out of the emphasis on learner autonomy and on learner strategies in SLA. The purpose of this paper is to review those few studies that have been published so far, to give an outline of definitions of beliefs and research methodology, and finally to provide alternatives to these, based on recent developments in the social sciences. With a reconsideration of beliefs come reconsiderations of research data and methods.

Ohjeita, tietoa ja turvaa kielen keinoin. Ulkomailta palkatut sairaanhoitajat ammatillista suomen kielen taitoaan osoittamassa

2016

Advice, information and safety by means of language: internationally recruited nurses demonstrating their professional Finnish language skills  he focus of this paper is on the professional language used by four internationally educated nurses working in Finnish in Finland. The data comes from a tailor-made professional language test module including integrated material-based tasks. The module was designed by the project Health care Finnish: developing and assessing Finnish proficiency among health care professionals (2014−2015) to complement the skill profiles based on the test results of the National Certifi- cates of Language Proficiency (NCLP) intermediate level test. None of the partic…

Learning English Through Social Interaction: The Case ofBig Brother 2006,Finland

2013

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of BigBrother Finland, a reality TV show, whose main communication is in Finnish, take up resources provided by English and use them for learning in their interaction. This interaction is characterized by an orientation to both the local context and the television audience, a mixture of activity types and translanguaging. It focuses on one of the participants who explicitly evaluates his own proficiency in English as limi…

A Survey of University Students’ Knowledge of Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Influential Factors in Middle East

2016

In this study, the most and the least common vocabulary learning strategies was explored among Eastern Mediterranean University international students. Besides, the role of personal factors such as gender and English proficiency level of students were considered. After distributing the questionnaire, the data were analyzed applying t-test and ANOVA. It was revealed that the level of importance of vocabulary learning strategy use was moderate for the EMU international students. Furthermore, it was found that metacognitive strategies and social strategies are the most and the least common vocabulary learning strategies respectively utilized by EMU international students for learning vocabular…

Gender-dependent language anxiety in Polish communication apprehensives

2012

This paper analyzes the relationship between communication apprehension and language anxiety from the perspective of gender. As virtually no empirical studies have addressed the explicit influence of gender on language anxiety in communication apprehensives, this paper proposes that females are generally more sensitive to anxiety, as reflected in various spheres of communication. For this reason, language anxiety levels in communication apprehensive females should be higher, unlike those of communication apprehensive males. Comparisons between them were made using a student t test, two-way ANOVA, and post-hoc Tukey test. The results revealed that Polish communication apprehensive secondary …

Activating Character Strengths Through Poetic Encounters in a Foreign Language—A Case Study

2016

The paper brings together two important issues related to effective functioning of foreign/second language learners, that is character strengths (one of the pillars of positive psychology) and the use of literary texts for language learning. The goals of using literary texts in a foreign/second language learning contexts and the goals of positive psychology converge. Both literature and positive psychology aim at enriching and expanding individual and social functioning and so they contribute to satisfaction and flourishing. The case study reported in the paper aimed at finding the participants’ opinions about the role of literary texts in foreign language learning and checking whether work…

From High-Throughput Microarray-Based Screening to Clinical Application: The Development of a Second Generation Multigene Test for Breast Cancer Prog…

2013

Several multigene tests have been developed for breast cancer patients to predict the individual risk of recurrence. Most of the first generation tests rely on proliferation-associated genes and are commonly carried out in central reference laboratories. Here, we describe the development of a second generation multigene assay, the EndoPredict test, a prognostic multigene expression test for estrogen receptor (ER) positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER2) negative (ER+/HER2−) breast cancer patients. The EndoPredict gene signature was initially established in a large high-throughput microarray-based screening study. The key steps for biomarker identification are discussed in det…