Immigrants learn Finnish through handcrafts

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Licenciate in Pedagogy Eeva-Maija Lappalainen is today defending her doctoral thesis on culturally-sensitive teaching at the Kajaani Teacher Training Unit of the University of Oulu.
     
The core of the thesis is how to teach the Finnish language and culture to immigrants and foreign students through handcrafts.
      After teaching Finnish to immigrants for a long time, Lappalainen has noticed that her pupils learn new words faster through handcrafts and they can even memorise them better. Hence, she has created a new method of teaching the basics of the Finnish language and practical skills to people who come from foreign cultures.
     
"Typically, there is no common language, and therefore we have created a simple auxiliary language that we can speak by the help of handcrafts. After all, handcraft methods and concepts are familiar to most immigrants. Hence it is easy to teach them for example adjectives", says Lappalainen.
     
The demand for immigrant education has increased rapidly. For example, at the Kaukametsä College in Kajaani, there are currently about 60 immigrants in various classes. Moreover, 16 immigrants from various parts of the world are learning Finnish through handcrafts. The daytime teaching lasts approximately seven hours, five days a week.


Links:
  University of Oulu
  City of Espoo - Live and learn

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