Growing Up Vietnamese in Finland - Looking Back 12 Years Later : The Well-Being and Sociocultural Adaptation of Vietnamese as Children or Adolescents and as Young Adults

Varttuminen vietnamilaisena Suomessa: 12 vuoden seurantajakso – Vietnamilaisten hyvinvointi ja sosiokulttuurinen sopeutuminen lapsena/nuorena sekä nuorena aikuisena Tämä tutkimus oli määrällinen pitkittäistutkimus lapsena tai nuorena vuosina 1979-1991 Suomeen saapuneiden vietnamilaisten akkulturaatiosta (kulttuurin muutoksista), psyykkisestä hyvinvoinnista ja sosiokulttuurisesta sopeutumisesta. Tutkimukseen osallistui ensimmäisessä vaiheessa (vuonna 1992) 97 satunnaisesti valittua vietnamilaista peruskoululaista ympäri maata, joita verrattin suomalaisiin luokkatovereihin. Seurantavaiheeseen (vuonna 2004) osallistui 59 ensimmäisessä vaiheessa mukana ollutta vietnamilaista, nyt iältään 20 – 31 -vuotiaita. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää mitkä tekijät ennustivat akkulturaation lopputuloksia, samalla huomioiden iän ja ympäristön (kontekstin) vaikutukset psyykkiseen hyvinvointiin ja sosiokulttuuriseen sopeutumiseen. Yksittäiset akkulturaatiodimensiot (kieli, arvot ja identiteetti) osoittautuivat tärkeämmiksi psyykkiselle hyvinvoinnille ja sosiokulttuuriselle sopeutumiselle kuin etniset, kansalliset tai kaksikulttuuriset profiilit, joissa yhdistyivät ao. kieli, arvot ja identiteetti. Identiteettimuutosta tapahtui (etniseen) vietnamilaiseen suuntaan ajan kuluessa, kun taas arvomuutosta tapahtui (kansalliseen) suomalaiseen suuntaan. Sekä suomen että vietnamin kielen taito lisääntyivät ajan myötä, millä oli myönteisiä vaikutuksia sekä psyykkiseen hyvinvointiin että sosiokulttuuriseen sopeutumiseen. Lähtötilanteen psyykkinen hyvinvointi ennusti hyvinvointia (masennuksen puutetta ja itsetuntoa) aikuisena, mutta sosiokulttuurinen sopeutuminen (koulumenestys) lapsena tai nuorena ei ennustanut kouluttautumista aikuisena. Parempi suomen kielen taito ja vähemmän identifioitumista suomalaiseksi aikuisena sekä masentuneisuuden puute ja vähemmän koettua syrjintää lapsena tai nuorena erottelivat psyykkisesti paremmin voivat aikuiset (ei-masentuneet) heistä, jotka olivat masentuneita. Parempaa kouluttautumista aikuisena ennustivat toisaalta vähemmän koettua syrjintää lapsena tai nuorena ja toisaalta aikuisena parempi suomen kielen taito, suurempi kansallisten (suomalaisten) itsenäisyysarvojen kannattaminen, mutta kuitenkin vähemmän identifioitumista suomalaisiin. Koetun syrjinnän merkitys psyykkiselle hyvinvoinnille, erityisesti lapsena tai nuorena, sekä sen pitkäaikaisvaikutukset psyykkiselle hyvinvoinnille ja sosiokulttuuriselle sopeutumiselle aikuisena osoittavat tarpeen puuttua varhain psyykkisiin ongelmiin sekä parantaa etnisten ryhmien välisiä suhteita. Avainsanat: akkulturaatio, psyykkinen hyvinvointi, sosiokultuurinen sopeutuminen, kieli, arvot, identiteetti, vietnamilainen, Suomi, lapset, nuoret, nuoret aikuiset

Why Don't Students Talk? Causes of Foreign Language Communication Apprehension in English Classes: A Comparison of High Apprehensive and Low Apprehensive Upper Secondary Students.

OBJECTIVES. Oral foreign language skills are an integral part of one's social, academic and professional competence. This can be problematic for those suffering from foreign language communication apprehension (CA), or a fear of speaking a foreign language. CA manifests itself, for example, through feelings of anxiety and tension, physical arousal and avoidance of foreign language communication situations. According to scholars, foreign language CA may impede the language learning process significantly and have detrimental effects on one's language learning, academic achievement and career prospects. Drawing on upper secondary students' subjective experiences of communication situations in English as a foreign language, this study seeks, first, to describe, analyze and interpret why upper secondary students experience English language communication apprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Second, this study seeks to analyse what the most anxiety-arousing oral production tasks in EFL classes are, and which features of different oral production tasks arouse English language communication apprehension and why. The ultimate objectives of the present study are to raise teachers' awareness of foreign language CA and its features, manifestations and impacts in foreign language classes as well as to suggest possible ways to minimize the anxiety-arousing features in foreign language classes. METHODS. The data was collected in two phases by means of six-part Likert-type questionnaires and theme interviews, and analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The questionnaire data was collected in spring 2008. The respondents were 122 first-year upper secondary students, 68 % of whom were girls and 31 % of whom were boys. The data was analysed by statistical methods using SPSS software. The theme interviews were conducted in spring 2009. The interviewees were 11 second-year upper secondary students aged 17 to 19, who were chosen by purposeful selection on the basis of their English language CA level measured in the questionnaires. Six interviewees were classified as high apprehensives and five as low apprehensives according to their score in the foreign language CA scale in the questionnaires. The interview data was coded and thematized using the technique of content analysis. The analysis and interpretation of the data drew on a comparison of the self-reports of the highly apprehensive and low apprehensive upper secondary students. RESULTS. The causes of English language CA in EFL classes as reported by the students were both internal and external in nature. The most notable causes were a low self-assessed English proficiency, a concern over errors, a concern over evaluation, and a concern over the impression made on others. Other causes related to a high English language CA were a lack of authentic oral practise in EFL classes, discouraging teachers and negative experiences of learning English, unrealistic internal demands for oral English performance, high external demands and expectations for oral English performance, the conversation partner's higher English proficiency, and the audience's large size and unfamiliarity. The most anxiety-arousing oral production tasks in EFL classes were presentations or speeches with or without notes in front of the class, acting in front of the class, pair debates with the class as audience, expressing thoughts and ideas to the class, presentations or speeches without notes while seated, group debates with the class as audience, and answering to the teacher's questions involuntarily. The main features affecting the anxiety-arousing potential of an oral production task were a high degree of attention, a large audience, a high degree of evaluation, little time for preparation, little linguistic support, and a long duration.

"Mut ei tää oo hei midsommarista!" - ruotsin kielen viestinnällinen suullinen harjoittelu yhteistoiminnallisten skeema- ja elaborointitehtävien avulla

Communicative oral practice in Swedish through collaborative schema-based and elaboration tasks The general aim of this study was to learn how to better understand foreign language communicative oral practice and to develop it as part of communicative language teaching. The language-specific aim was to study how Swedish was being practised communicatively and orally in a classroom context as part of the didactic teaching-studying-learning process, and how the students' communicative oral practice in Swedish was carried out through collaborative schema-based and elaboration tasks. The scientific problem of this study focused on the essence of foreign language communicative oral proficiency. The research questions were concerned with 1) the students' involvement in carrying out the given oral tasks; 2) the features of communication and interaction strategies; 3) thematic vocabulary, and 4) the students' experiences and conceptions of the communicative oral tasks used. The study consisted of two groups of students from a Helsinki-area school (a group of upper secondary school students, Swedish Level A, Courses 2 and 3, n=9; and a group of basic education students, Swedish Level B, Course 2, n=13). The study was carried out as a pedagogically oriented case study which included certain features of ethnographic research and where the students' teacher acted as a researcher of her own work. The communicative oral practice contained five different tasks. The research data were gathered through systematic observation, audio recordings and by a questionnaire. The data were analysed through ethnographic content analysis methods. The main research finding was that a good deal of social interaction, collaboration and communication took place between the students when involved in communicative oral practice in Swedish. The students took almost optimal advantage of the allocated training time. They mostly used Swedish when participating in interactional communication. Finnish was mostly used by the students when they were deciding how to carry out a given task, aiming at intersubjectivity or negotiating meaning. The students were relaxed when practising Swedish. They also asked for and gave linguistic help in the spirit of collaborative learning principles. This resulted in interaction between students that highlighted certain features of negotiation of meaning, scaffolding and collaborative dialogue. Asking for and giving help in language issues concentrated mainly on vocabulary, and only in a few cases on grammar or pronunciation. The students also needed the teacher as a mentor. As well, the students had an enjoyable time when practising, which was most often related to carrying out the oral tasks. The thematic vocabulary used by the students corresponded well to the thematic lexis that served as a basis for the practice. At its most efficient, this lexis was most evident when the basic education students were carrying out schema-based tasks. The students' questionnaire answers agreed with the research findings gained through systematic observation and the analysis of audio recordings. The communicative tasks planned by the teacher and implemented by the students were very much in line. The language-didactic theory as presented in this study and the research findings can be widely utilised in pre-service and in-service teacher education, as well as, more generally, when developing communicative language teaching. Key words: communicative oral practice; the Swedish language; foreign language; didactic teaching-studying-learning process; communicative language teaching; collaborative task; schema-based task; elaboration task.

Functional Outcome after Free Flap Reconstructions in Oral and Pharyngeal Cancer

Oral cancer ranks among the 10 most common cancers worldwide. Since it is commonly diagnosed at locally advanced stage, curing the cancer demands extensive tissue resection. The emergent defect is reconstructed generally with a free flap transfer. Repair of the upper aerodigestive track with maintenance of its multiform activities is challenging. The aim of the study was to extract comprehensive treatment outcomes for patients having undergone microvascular free flap transfer because of large oral cavity or pharyngeal cancer. Ninety-four patients were analyzed for postoperative survival and complications. Forty-four patients were followed-up and analyzed for functional outcome, which was determined in terms of quality of life, speech, swallowing, and intraoral sensation. Quality of life was assessed using the University of Washington Head and Neck Questionnaire. Speech was analyzed for aerodynamic parameters and for nasal acoustic energy, as well as perceptually for articulatory proficiency, voice quality, and intelligibility. Videofluorography was performed to determine the swallowing ability. Intraoral sensation was measured by moving 2-point discrimination. The 3-year overall survival was over 40%. The 1-year disease-free survival was 43%. Postoperative complications arose in over half of the patients. Flap success rate was high. Perioperative mortality varied between 2% and 11%. Unemployment and heavy drinking were the strongest predictors of survival. Sociodemographic factors were found to associate with quality of life. The global quality of life score deteriorated and did not return to the preoperative level. Significant reduction was detectable in the domains measuring chewing and speech, and in appearance and shoulder function. The basic elements necessary for normal speech were maintained. Speech intelligibility reduced and was related to the misarticulations of the /r/ and /s/ phonemes. Deviant /r/ and /s/ persisted in most patients. Hoarseness and hypernasality occurred infrequently. One year postoperatively, 98% of the patients had achieved oral nutrition and half of them were on a regular masticated diet. Overt and silent aspiration was encountered throughout the follow-up. At 12-month swallow test, 44% of the patients aspirated, 70% of whom silently. Of these patients, 15% presented with pulmonary changes referring to aspiration. Intraoral sensation weakened but was unrelated to oral functions. The results provide new data for oral reconstructions and highlight the importance of the functional outcome of the treatment for an oral cancer patient. The mouth and the pharynx encompass a unit of utmost functional complexity. Surgery should continue to make progress in this area, and methods that lead to good function should be developed. Operational outcome should always be evaluated in terms of function.

A Sketch of the Phonology and Grammar of Rajbanshi

This dissertation is a synchronic description of the phonology and grammar of two dialects of the Rajbanshi language (Eastern Indo-Aryan) as spoken in Jhapa, Nepal. I have primarily confined the analysis to the oral expression, since the emerging literary form is still in its infancy. The grammatical analysis is therefore based, for the most part, on a corpus of oral narrative text which was recorded and transcribed from three informants from north-east Jhapa. An informant, speaking a dialect from south-west Jhapa cross checked this text corpus and provided additional elicited material. I have described the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language, and also one aspect of its discourse structure. For the most part the phonology follows the basic Indo-Aryan pattern. Derivational morphology, compounding, reduplication, echo formation and onomatopoeic constructions are considered, as well as number, noun classes (their assignment and grammatical function), pronouns, and case and postpositions. In verbal morphology I cover causative stems, the copula, primary and secondary agreement, tense, aspect, mood, auxiliary constructions and non-finite forms. The term secondary agreement here refers to genitive agreement, dative-subject agreement and patient (and sometimes patient-agent) agreement. The breaking of default agreement rules has a range of pragmatic inferences. I argue that a distinction, based on formal, semantic and statistical grounds, should be made between conjunct verbs, derivational compound verbs and quasi-aspectual compound verbs. Rajbanshi has an open set of adjectives, and it additionally makes use of a restricted set of nouns which can function as adjectives. Various particles, and the emphatic and conjunctive clitics are also considered. The syntactic structures studied include: non-declarative speech acts, phrase-internal and clause-internal constituent order, negation, subordination, coordination and valence adjustment. I explain how the future, present and past tenses in Rajbanshi oral narratives do not seem to maintain a time reference, but rather to indicate a distinction between background and foreground information. I call this tense neutralisation .

Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network : Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth Century Epistolary English

This study deals with language change and variation in the correspondence of the eighteenth-century Bluestocking circle, a social network which provided learned men and women with an informal environment for the pursuit of scholarly entertainment. Elizabeth Montagu (1718 1800), a notable social hostess and a Shakespearean scholar, was one of their key figures. The study presents the reconstruction of Elizabeth Montagu s social networks from her youth to her later years with a special focus on the Bluestocking circle, and linguistic research on private correspondence between Montagu and her Bluestocking friends and family members between the years 1738 1778. The epistolary language use is investigated using the methods and frameworks of corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, and social network analysis. The approach is diachronic and concerns real-time language change. The research is based on a selection of manuscript letters which I have edited and compiled into an electronic corpus (Bluestocking Corpus). I have also devised a network strength scale in order to quantify the strength of network ties and to compare the results of the linguistic research with the network analysis. The studies range from the reconstruction and analysis of Elizabeth Montagu s most prominent social networks to the analysis of changing morphosyntactic features and spelling variation in Montagu s and her network members correspondence. The linguistic studies look at the use of the progressive construction, preposition stranding and pied piping, and spelling variation in terms of preterite and past participle endings in the regular paradigm (-ed, - d, -d, - t, -t) and full / contracted spellings of auxiliary verbs. The results are analysed in terms of social network membership, sociolinguistic variables of the correspondents, and, when relevant, aspects of eighteenth-century linguistic prescriptivism. The studies showed a slight diachronic increase in the use of the progressive, a significant decrease of the stigmatised preposition stranding and increase of pied piping, and relatively informal but socially controlled epistolary spelling. Certain significant changes in Elizabeth Montagu s language use over the years could be attributed to her increasingly prominent social standing and the changes in her social networks, and the strength of ties correlated strongly with the use of the progressive in the Bluestocking Corpus. Gender, social rank, and register in terms of kinship/friendship had a significant influence in language use, and an effect of prescriptivism could also be detected. Elizabeth Montagu s network ties resulted in language variation in terms of network membership, her own position in a given network, and the social factors that controlled eighteenth-century interaction. When all the network ties are strong, linguistic variation seems to be essentially linked to the social variables of the informants.

Language change as an evolutionary process

In the thesis it is discussed in what ways concepts and methodology developed in evolutionary biology can be applied to the explanation and research of language change. The parallel nature of the mechanisms of biological evolution and language change is explored along with the history of the exchange of ideas between these two disciplines. Against this background computational methods developed in evolutionary biology are taken into consideration in terms of their applicability to the study of historical relationships between languages. Different phylogenetic methods are explained in common terminology, avoiding the technical language of statistics. The thesis is on one hand a synthesis of earlier scientific discussion, and on the other an attempt to map out the problems of earlier approaches in addition to finding new guidelines in the study of language change on their basis. Primarily literature about the connections between evolutionary biology and language change, along with research articles describing applications of phylogenetic methods into language change have been used as source material. The thesis starts out by describing the initial development of the disciplines of evolutionary biology and historical linguistics, a process which right from the beginning can be seen to have involved an exchange of ideas concerning the mechanisms of language change and biological evolution. The historical discussion lays the foundation for the handling of the generalised account of selection developed during the recent few decades. This account is aimed for creating a theoretical framework capable of explaining both biological evolution and cultural change as selection processes acting on self-replicating entities. This thesis focusses on the capacity of the generalised account of selection to describe language change as a process of this kind. In biology, the mechanisms of evolution are seen to form populations of genetically related organisms through time. One of the central questions explored in this thesis is whether selection theory makes it possible to picture languages are forming populations of a similar kind, and what a perspective like this can offer to the understanding of language in general. In historical linguistics, the comparative method and other, complementing methods have been traditionally used to study the development of languages from a common ancestral language. Computational, quantitative methods have not become widely used as part of the central methodology of historical linguistics. After the fading of a limited popularity enjoyed by the lexicostatistical method since the 1950s, only in the recent years have also the computational methods of phylogenetic inference used in evolutionary biology been applied to the study of early language history. In this thesis the possibilities offered by the traditional methodology of historical linguistics and the new phylogenetic methods are compared. The methods are approached through the ways in which they have been applied to the Indo-European languages, which is the most thoroughly investigated language family using both the traditional and the phylogenetic methods. The problems of these applications along with the optimal form of the linguistic data used in these methods are explored in the thesis. The mechanisms of biological evolution are seen in the thesis as parallel in a limited sense to the mechanisms of language change, however sufficiently so that the development of a generalised account of selection is deemed as possibly fruiful for understanding language change. These similarities are also seen to support the validity of using phylogenetic methods in the study of language history, although the use of linguistic data and the models of language change employed by these models are seen to await further development.

“We live in in a house of blo- in a block of flats.” – Self-repair in EFL Spoken Language

Tämä tutkielma on osa Helsingin yliopiston rahoittamaa HY-talk -tutkimusprojektia, jonka tavoite on vankentaa puheviestinnän, erityisesti vieraiden kielten suullisen taidon opetusta ja arviointia yleissivistävässä koulutuksessa ja korkeakouluasteella. Tämän tutkielman tavoite on selvittää millaisia korjauksia englantia vieraana kielenä puhuvat ihmiset tekevät puheeseensa ja tutkia itsekorjauksen ja sujuvuuden välistä suhdetta. Korjausjäsennystä ja itsekorjausta on aiemmin tutkittu sekä keskustelunanalyysin että psykolingvistiikan aloilla, ja vaikka tämä tutkielma onkin lähempänä aiempaa keskustelunanalyyttistä kuin psykolingvististä tutkimusta, siinä hyödynnetään molempia suuntauksia. Itsekorjausta on yleisesti pidetty merkkinä erityisesti ei-natiivien kielenpuhujien sujuvuuden puutteesta. Tämän tutkielman tarkoitus on selvittää, kuinka läheisesti itsekorjaus todella liittyy sujuvuuteen tai sen puutteeseen. Tutkielman materiaali koostuu HY-talk -projektia varten kerätyistä puhenäytteistä ja niiden pohjalta tehdyistä taitotasoarvioinneista. Puhenäytteet kerättiin vuonna 2007 projektia varten järjestettyjen puhekielen testaustilanteiden yhteydessä kolmessa eteläsuomalaisessa koulussa. Koska projektin tavoitteena on tutkia ja parantaa kielten suullisen taidon arviointia, projektissa mukana olleet kieliammattilaiset arvioivat puhujien taitotasot projektia varten (Eurooppalaisen Viitekehyksen taitotasokuvainten pohjalta) koottujen arviointiasteikoiden perusteella, ja nämä arvioinnit tallennettiin osaksi projektin materiaalia. Tutkielmassa analysoidaan itsekorjauksia aiemman psykolingvistisen tutkimuksen pohjalta kootun korjaustyyppiluokituksen sekä tätä tutkielmaa varten luodun korjausten oikeellisuutta vertailevan luokituksen avulla. Lisäksi siinä vertaillaan kahden korkeamman ja kahden matalamman taitotasoarvioinnin saaneen puhujan itsekorjauksia. Tulokset osoittavat, että ei-natiivien puheessa esiintyy monenlaisia eri korjaustyyppejä, ja että yleisimpiä korjauksia ovat alkuperäisen lausuman toistot. Yleisiä ovat myös korjaukset, joissa puhuja korjaa virheen tai keskeyttää puheensa ja aloittaa kokonaan uuden lausuman. Lisäksi tuloksista käy ilmi, ettei suurin osa korjauksista todennäköisesti johdu puhujien sujuvuuden puutteesta. Yleisimmät korjaustyypit voivat johtua suurimmaksi osaksi yksilön puhetyylistä, siitä, että puhuja hakee jotain tiettyä sanaa tai ilmausta mielessään tai siitä, että puhuja korjaa puheessaan huomaamansa kieliopillisen, sanastollisen tai äänteellisen virheen. Vertailu korkeammalle ja matalammalle taitotasolle arvioitujen puhujien välillä osoittaa selkeimmin, ettei suurin osa itsekorjauksista ole yhteydessä puhujan sujuvuuteen. Vertailusta käy ilmi, ettei pelkkä itsekorjausten määrä kerro kuinka sujuvasti puhuja käyttää kieltä, sillä toinen korkeammalle taitotasolle arvioiduista puhujista korjaa puhettaan lähes yhtä monesti kuin matalammalle tasolle arvioidut puhujat. Lisäksi korjausten oikeellisuutta vertailevan luokituksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, etteivät niin korkeammalle kuin matalammallekaan tasolle arvioidut puhujat useimmiten korjaa puhettaan siksi, etteivät pystyisi ilmaisemaan viestiään oikein ja ymmärrettävästi.

Virtual versus classroom language teaching : A comparative study of the learning outcomes and student responses between two English reading comprehension groups

A 26-hour English reading comprehension course was taught to two groups of second year Finnish Pharmacy students: a virtual group (33 students) and a teacher-taught group (25 students). The aims of the teaching experiment were to find out: 1.What has to be taken into account when teaching English reading comprehension to students of pharmacy via the Internet and using TopClass? 2. How will the learning outcomes of the virtual group and the control group differ? 3. How will the students and the Department of Pharmacy respond to the different and new method, i.e. the virtual teaching method? 4. Will it be possible to test English reading comprehension learning material using the groupware tool TopClass? The virtual exercises were written within the Internet authoring environment, TopClass. The virtual group was given the reading material and grammar booklet on paper, but they did the reading comprehension tasks (written by the teacher), autonomously via the Internet. The control group was taught by the same teacher in 12 2-hour sessions, while the virtual group could work independently within the given six weeks. Both groups studied the same material: ten pharmaceutical articles with reading comprehension tasks as well as grammar and vocabulary exercises. Both groups took the same final test. Students in both groups were asked to evaluate the course using a 1 to 5 rating scale and they were also asked to assess their respective courses verbally. A detailed analysis of the different aspects of the student evaluation is given. Conclusions: 1.The virtual students learned pharmaceutical English relatively well but not significantly better than the classroom students 2. The overall student satisfaction in the virtual pharmacy English reading comprehension group was found to be higher than that in the teacher-taught control group. 3. Virtual learning is easier for linguistically more able students; less able students need more time with the teacher. 4. The sample in this study is rather small, but it is a pioneering study. 5. The Department of Pharmacy in the University of Helsinki wishes to incorporate virtual English reading comprehension teaching in its curriculum. 6. The sophisticated and versatile TopClass system is relatively easy for a traditional teacher and quite easy for the students to learn. It can be used e.g. for automatic checking of routine answers and document transfer, which both lighten the workloads of both parties. It is especially convenient for teaching reading comprehension. Key words: English reading comprehension, teacher-taught class, virtual class, attitudes of students, learning outcomes