Professor: New methods to be introduced in language teaching

English dominates choices among pupils

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It is high time to test new methods in language teaching, says professor Minna-Riitta Luukka from the Department of Languages at the University of Jyväskylä.
     
The language skills of Finns are becoming increasingly narrow and one-sided: Finns are satisfactorily proficient only in English, while their Swedish skills are weak. When it comes to German, Russian or French, many students are no longer found at the university level.
      In 2007, more than 90% of pupils in Finnish comprehensive schools chose English as their first foreign language (A1), which they normally start studying in the 3rd grade.
      Only 25% of pupils studied a voluntary A2 language in the 5th grade, and only 6% of them had chosen German as their A2 language.
      The studies of the "B language" or the second native language, which everybody has to learn, begin in the 7th grade.
      Only 13% of pupils study an optional B2 language in upper grades. The proportion of German is 6%, that of French is 5%, while only 0.6% of pupils study Russian.
     
One method to expand the language reserves and to increase pupils’ motivation to study even so-called uncommon languages would be to introduce language immersion already in daycare centres and lower grades.
      The purpose of language immersion is to surround pupils by the foreign language. Language immersion can be either partial or total.
      In partial immersion, part of the class time is spent learning a subject matter in the foreign language.
      In total immersion, almost 100% of class time is spent in the foreign language.
      ”Pupils need incentives and opening paths that would make it easier to revert to a language even later on”, Luukka notes.
      In Luukka’s opinion, the time spent learning other school subjects in the foreign language should be increased.
     
Municipalities should set up tenures for circulating language techers and to increase all kinds of cooperation and to invest for example in online teaching in order to be able to afford to teach even small groups.
      Another stronger and politically sensitive method would be to make the current language supply more optional, at which point one is facing the hot-button fact that Swedish is currently a mandatory school subject for Finnish-speaking pupils.
     
Mandatory Swedish has been criticised by Pentti Hyttinen, the Executive Director of the Regional Council of North Karelia, who recently demanded in Helsingin Sanomat that the status of Russian in Finnish schools should be improved.
      According to Hyttinen, Finnish schools should introduce mandatory Russian beside enforced Swedish.
     
However, Finland’s language policy recommendations have proposed only alternative models. One of them would allow pupils themselves to choose all languages they would like to study at a comprehensive school.
      According to another alternative, a pupil could replace Swedish by the language of another neighbouring country, including Norwegian, Russian, or Estonian.
      Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education has rejected such applications so far.
      The Swedish Teachers’ Association in Finland proposed recently to Timo Lankinen, the Director General of the Finnish National Board of Education, that the teaching of Swedish should be started already in the 5th grade in order to improve the results.
      Lankinen is the chair of a working group currently discussing the framework on division into lessons in comprehensive schools. The work is expected to be completed by next spring.
     
The Federation of Foreign Language Teachers in Finland (SUKOL) has proposed that it would be the subjective right of all pupils in comprehensive schools to study a minimum of two foreign languages as well as the other native language.


Links:
  The Federation of Foreign Language Teachers in Finland (SUKOL)

Helsingin Sanomat