Designing a blended learning model for primary school language learning

In Finland, there is a desperate need for flexible, reliable and functional multi-e-learning settings for pupils aged 11-13. Southern Finland has several ongoing e-learning projects, but none that develop a multiple setting, with learning and teaching occurring between more than two schools. In 2006, internet connections were not broadband and data transfer was mainly audio data. Connections and technical problems occurred, which were an obstacle to multi-e-learning. Internet connections today enable web-based learning in major parts of
Lapland and by 2015, broadband will reach even the remotest villages up north. Therefore, it is important to research the possibilities of multi-e-learning and to build collaborative, learner-centred, versatile network models for primary school-aged pupils. The resulting model will facilitate distance learning to extend education to rural, sparsely populated areas, and it will give a model of using mobile devices in language portfolios. This will promote regional equality and prevent exclusion. Working with portfolios provides the opportunity to develop mobility from a pedagogical point of view. It is important to study the pros and cons of mobile devices in producing artefacts on portfolios in e-learning and language learning settings.
The current study represents a design-based research approach. The design research approach includes two important aspects concerning the current research: ‘a teacher as researcher’ aspect, which means there is the possibility to be strongly involved in developing processes and an obstacle-aspect, which means that problems while developing, are seen as a
promoter in evolving the designed model, as apposed to negative results.

Designing a blended learning model for primary school language learning

In Finland, there is a desperate need for flexible, reliable and functional multi-e-learning settings for pupils aged 11-13. Southern Finland has several ongoing e-learning projects, but none that develop a multiple setting, with learning and teaching occurring between more than two schools. In 2006, internet connections were not broadband and data transfer was mainly audio data. Connections and technical problems occurred, which were an obstacle to multi-e-learning. Internet connections today enable web-based learning in major parts of Lapland and by 2015, broadband will reach even the remotest villages up north. Therefore, it is important to research the possibilities of multi-e-learning and to build collaborative, learner-centred, versatile network models for primary school-aged pupils. The resulting model will facilitate distance learning to extend education to rural, sparsely populated areas, and it will give a model of using mobile devices in language portfolios. This will promote regional equality and prevent exclusion. Working with portfolios provides the opportunity to develop mobility from a pedagogical point of view. It is important to study the pros and cons of mobile devices in producing artefacts on portfolios in e-learning and language learning settings. The current study represents a design-based research approach. The design research approach includes two important aspects concerning the current research: ‘a teacher as researcher’ aspect, which means there is the possibility to be strongly involved in developing processes and an obstacle-aspect, which means that problems while developing, are seen as a promoter in evolving the designed model, as apposed to negative results.

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.

Language learning in infancy

Although immensely complex, speech is also a very efficient means of communication between humans. Understanding how we acquire the skills necessary for perceiving and producing speech remains an intriguing goal for research. However, while learning is likely to begin as soon as we start hearing speech, the tools for studying the language acquisition strategies in the earliest stages of development remain scarce. One prospective strategy is statistical learning. In order to investigate its role in language development, we designed a new research method. The method was tested in adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) as a measure of cortical activity. Neonatal brain activity was measured with electroencephalography (EEG). Additionally, we developed a method for assessing the integration of seen and heard syllables in the developing brain as well as a method for assessing the role of visual speech when learning phoneme categories. The MEG study showed that adults learn statistical properties of speech during passive listening of syllables. The amplitude of the N400m component of the event-related magnetic fields (ERFs) reflected the location of syllables within pseudowords. The amplitude was also enhanced for syllables in a statistically unexpected position. The results suggest a role for the N400m component in statistical learning studies in adults. Using the same research design with sleeping newborn infants, the auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) measured with EEG reflected the location of syllables within pseudowords. The results were successfully replicated in another group of infants. The results show that even newborn infants have a powerful mechanism for automatic extraction of statistical characteristics from speech. We also found that 5-month-old infants integrate some auditory and visual syllables into a fused percept, whereas other syllable combinations are not fully integrated. Auditory syllables were paired with visual syllables possessing a different phonetic identity, and the ERPs for these artificial syllable combinations were compared with the ERPs for normal syllables. For congruent auditory-visual syllable combinations, the ERPs did not differ from those for normal syllables. However, for incongruent auditory-visual syllable combinations, we observed a mismatch response in the ERPs. The results show an early ability to perceive speech cross-modally. Finally, we exposed two groups of 6-month-old infants to artificially created auditory syllables located between two stereotypical English syllables in the formant space. The auditory syllables followed, equally for both groups, a unimodal statistical distribution, suggestive of a single phoneme category. The visual syllables combined with the auditory syllables, however, were different for the two groups, one group receiving visual stimuli suggestive of two separate phoneme categories, the other receiving visual stimuli suggestive of only one phoneme category. After a short exposure, we observed different learning outcomes for the two groups of infants. The results thus show that visual speech can influence learning of phoneme categories. Altogether, the results demonstrate that complex language learning skills exist from birth. They also suggest a role for the visual component of speech in the learning of phoneme categories.

Dokumentation och beskrivning som språkplanering : perspektiv från arbete med tre tecknade minoritetsspråk

Language Documentation and Description as Language Planning Working with Three Signed Minority Languages Sign languages are minority languages that typically have a low status in society. Language planning has traditionally been controlled from outside the sign-language community. Even though signed languages lack a written form, dictionaries have played an important role in language description and as tools in foreign language learning. The background to the present study on sign language documentation and description as language planning is empirical research in three dictionary projects in Finland-Swedish Sign Language, Albanian Sign Language, and Kosovar Sign Language. The study consists of an introductory article and five detailed studies which address language planning from different perspectives. The theoretical basis of the study is sociocultural linguistics. The research methods used were participant observation, interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis. The primary research questions are the following: (1) What is the role of dictionary and lexicographic work in language planning, in research on undocumented signed language, and in relation to the language community as such? (2) What factors are particular challenges in the documentation of a sign language and should therefore be given special attention during lexicographic work? (3) Is a conventional dictionary a valid tool for describing an undocumented sign language? The results indicate that lexicographic work has a central part to play in language documentation, both as part of basic research on undocumented sign languages and for status planning. Existing dictionary work has contributed new knowledge about the languages and the language communities. The lexicographic work adds to the linguistic advocacy work done by the community itself with the aim of vitalizing the language, empowering the community, receiving governmental recognition for the language, and improving the linguistic (human) rights of the language users. The history of signed languages as low status languages has consequences for language planning and lexicography. One challenge that the study discusses is the relationship between the sign-language community and the hearing sign linguist. In order to make it possible for the community itself to take the lead in a language planning process, raising linguistic awareness within the community is crucial. The results give rise to questions of whether lexicographic work is of more importance for status planning than for corpus planning. A conventional dictionary as a tool for describing an undocumented sign language is criticised. The study discusses differences between signed and spoken/written languages that are challenging for lexicographic presentations. Alternative electronic lexicographic approaches including both lexicon and grammar are also discussed. Keywords: sign language, Finland-Swedish Sign Language, Albanian Sign Language, Kosovar Sign Language, language documentation and description, language planning, lexicography

Turning the Kaleidoscope - (E)FL Educational Experience and Inquiry as Auto/biography

This book is a study on learning, teaching/counselling, and research on the two. My quest has been to find a pedagogically-motivated way of researching learning and teaching interaction, and in particular counselling, in an autonomous language-learning environment. I have tried to develop a method that would make room for lived experience, meaning-making and narrating, because in my view these all characterise learning encounters between language learners and counsellors, and learners and their peers. Lived experience as a source of meaning, telling and co-telling becomes especially significant when we try to listen to the diverse personal and academic voices of the past as expressed in autobiographical narratives. I have aimed at researching various ALMS dialogues (Autonomous Learning Modules, University of Helsinki Language Centre English course and programme), and autobiographical narratives within them, in a way that shows respect for the participants, and that is relevant, reflective and, most importantly, self-reflexive. My interest has been in autobiographical telling in (E)FL [(English as a) foreign language], both in students first-person written texts on their language- learning histories and in the sharing of stories between learners and a counsellor. I have turned to narrative inquiry in my quest and have written the thesis as an experiential narrative. In particular, I have studied learners and counsellors in one and the same story, as characters in one narrative, in an attempt to avoid the impression that I am telling yet another separate, anecdotal story, retrospectively. Through narrative, I have shed light on the subjective dimensions of language learning and experience, and have come closer to understanding the emotional aspects of learning encounters. I have questioned and rejected a distanced and objective approach to describing learning and teaching/counselling. I have argued for a holistic and experiential approach to (E)FL encounters in which there is a need to see emotion and cognition as intertwined, and thus to appreciate learners and counsellors emotionally-charged experiences as integral to their identities. I have also argued for a way of describing such encounters as they are situated in history, time, autobiography, and the learning context. I have turned my gaze on various constellations of lived experience: the data was collected on various occasions and in various settings during one course and consists of videotaped group sessions, individual counselling sessions between students and their group counsellor, biographic narrative interviews with myself, open-ended personally-inspired reflection texts written by the students about their language-learning histories, and student logs and diaries. I do not consider data collection an unproblematic occasion, or innocent practice, and I defend the integrity of the research process. Research writing cannot be separated from narrative field work and analysing and interpreting the data. The foci in my work have turned to be the following: 1) describing ALMS encounters and specifying their narrative aspects; 2) reconceptualising learner and teacher autonomy in ALMS and in (E)FL; 2) developing (E)FL methodologically through a teacher-researcher s identity work; 4) research writing as a dialogical narrative process, and the thesis as an experiential narrative. Identity and writing as inquiry, and the deeply narrative and autobiographical nature of the (E)FL teaching/counselling/researching have come to the fore in this research. Research writing as a relational activity and its implications for situated ways of knowing and knowledge turned out to be important foci. I have also focussed on the context-bound and local teacher knowledge and ways of knowing about being a teacher, and I have argued for personal ways of knowing about, and learning and studying foreign languages. I discuss research as auto/biography: as a practising counsellor I use my own life and (E)FL experience to understand and interpret the stories of the research participants even though I was not involved in their course work. The supposedly static binaries of learner/teacher, and also learner autonomy/teacher autonomy, are thus brought into the discussion. I have highlighted the infinite variability and ever-changing nature of learning and teaching English, but the book is also of relevance to foreign language education in general.

"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.

Anpassning i språkkontakt : Morfologisk och ortografisk anpassning av engelska lånord i svenskan

The study investigates the formal integration of English loanwords into the Swedish language system. The aim has been to analyse and describe the morphological/morphosyntactic and the orthographical integration of the loanwords. I have studied how the foreign language elements get accommodated to Swedish and which factors are relevant in the integration. The material for the study consists of Swedish newspapers published in Sweden and Finland in paper format (with a focus on the years 1975 and 2000) and newspapers in digital format on the net. The theoretical frame for the study is contact linguistics. The study is based on a sociolinguistic, structural and language political perspective on what language is, and what language contact is. The method used is usage-based linguistic analysis. In the morphological study of the loanwords, I have made both a quantitative and a qualitative study. I have analysed the extent to which loanwords show some indication of integration in Swedish, and to what extent they show no signs of integration at all. I have also analysed integration in relation to word classes i.e., how nouns, adjectives and verbs integrate and which factors are relevant for the result of the integration. The result shows that most loanwords (36 %) do not show any signs of being formally integrated in Swedish. They undergo neither inflectional, nor derivational changes. One fifth of the loanwords are inflected according to the rules of Swedish grammar. Nouns are generally more often than verbs placed in positions in the sentence where no formal adaption is needed. Almost all of the verbs in the material are inflected according to Swedish rules of grammar. Only 3 % of the loanwords are inflected according to English rules or are placed in an ungrammatical position in the sentence. The orthographical study shows that English loanwords very seldom get adapted to Swedish orthography. Some English vowel and consonant graphemes are replaced with Swedish ones, for example a, ay and ai are replaced with aj or ej (mail → mejl). The study also indicates that morphological integration is related to orthographical integration: loanwords that are inflected according to Swedish grammar are more likely to be orthographical integrated than loanwords that are inflected according to English grammar. The results also shows that the integration of loanwords are affected by mostly language structural factors and language political factors.

Public opinion on useful languages in Europe

This article analyses the results of five Eurobarometer surveys (of 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2005) designed to measure which languages Europeans consider most useful to know. Most Europeans are of the opinion that English is the most useful, followed by French and German. During the last decade the popularity of French and German as useful languages has been decreasing significantly, while English has remained universally favoured as the most useful language. French and German have lost their popularity especially among those who do not speak them as a foreign language. On the other hand, Spanish, Russian and other languages (often these include languages of neighbouring countries, minority languages or a second official language of the country in question) have kept and even increased their former level of popularity. Opinions about useful languages vary according to a respondent’s knowledge of languages, education and profession. This article analyses these differences and discusses their impact on the study of foreign languages and the future of the practice of foreign languages in Europe.

Toisen kielen oppijan identiteetti ja arkielämän vuorovaikutustilanteet : Tapaustutkimus viiden maahanmuuttajanaisen suomen kielen oppimisesta

Tutkielma on haastatteluaineistoon perustuva tapaustutkimus, jossa tarkastellaan viittä pääkaupunkiseudulla elävää maahanmuuttajanaista suomen kielen oppijoina ja käyttäjinä. Työssä paneudutaan toisaalta identiteetin ja toisen kielen oppimisen suhteeseen ja toisaalta siihen, millaisissa arjen vuorovaikutustilanteissa toisen kielen oppija pääsee puhumista harjoittelemaan. Tutkimuksen teoreettisena kehyksenä ovat sosiokulttuurinen kielentutkimus ja jälkistrukturalistinen identiteettikäsitys. Työn innoittajana ja esikuvana on kanadalaisen Bonny Nortonin tapaustutkimus Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change (2000), jonka keskeisistä käsitteistä on omaksuttu muun muassa kielenoppijan panostus. Aineisto on kerätty puolentoista vuoden aikana ja koostuu 14 nauhoitetusta ja litteroidusta haastattelusta. Analyysi jakautuu kahteen osaan. Ensimmäisessä osassa osoitetaan yksilön sosiaalisen identiteetin yhteys toisen kielen oppimiseen kolmen ulottuvuuden kautta, joita ovat Suomeen muuton syyt ja tulevaisuudensuunnitelmat, kielenoppijuus ja monikielisyys sekä sukupuoli ja ikä. Olennainen päätelmä on, ettei yksilön toisen kielen oppimismenestystä voi erottaa identiteetistä. Toisessa osassa analysoidaan arkielämän vuorovaikutustilanteita: ensinnäkin sitä, millaisia mahdollisuuksia toisen kielen oppijalla on päästä puhumaan kohdekieltä ja toiseksi sitä, millaisiksi nuo tilanteet muotoutuvat. Keskeisin tutkimustulos on, että toisen kielen oppijalle tarjoutuu liian vähän vapaamuotoisia suomen puhumisen mahdollisuuksia. Vuorovaikutustilanteita hallitsevat usein epätasapainoiset valtasuhteet, jotka rajoittavat kielenoppijaa, toisinaan jopa vaientavat tämän. Toisen kielen oppimisen ja identiteetin suhdetta on Suomessa tutkittu varsin vähän. Niin ikään oppijan vaientaminen vuorovaikutustilanteissa on jäänyt huomiotta. Tutkielma avaa ajankohtaista aihepiiriä ja mielenkiintoisia jatkotutkimusnäkymiä, joista yksi olisi vuorovaikutustilanteiden etnografinen havainnointi.

Yhteisestä toiminnasta yhteiseen kieleen : keskustelunanalyyttinen tutkimus toisen kielen oppimisesta kielikylpypäiväkodin arkitilanteissa

This dissertation examines how Finnish-speaking children learn Swedish in an immersion kindergarten where the method of Canadian immersion is used. Within the framework of conversation analysis, this study explores how second language learning is situated in interaction and evidenced in the participants´ verbal and non-verbal behavior. The database consists of 40 hours of videotaped data collected in naturally occurring situations in a group of 15 four-year-old children during the first two years of their immersion. Due to the immersion method, all the children share the same L1, in this case Finnish, and the teachers understand Finnish. However, they speak only Swedish to the children in all situations and Swedish is learned in interaction without formal teaching. The aim of the study is to discover how the children´s second language competence gradually increases when they participate in interaction with the Swedish-speaking teachers. The study also sheds light on the methodological question of how second language learning can be analyzed with the method of conversation analysis. The focus is on showing how the second language is learned in interaction, especially on how learning is achieved collaboratively. In this study, the emerging second language competence is explored by investigating how the children show understanding of the teachers´ non-verbal and verbal actions during the first and the second semester of the immersion. The children´s use of Swedish is analyzed by investigating how they recycle lexical items and later even syntactic structures from the teachers´ Swedish turns. The results show that the teachers´ actions are largely understood by the children even at the beginning of the immersion. The analyzes of the children´s responsive turns reveal that they interpret the teachers´ turns on the basis of non-verbal cues at first. Especially at the beginning of the immersion, the participants orient to the progress of interaction and not to problems in understanding. Even in situations where the next actions show that the children do not understand what is said, they tend to display understanding rather than non-understanding. This behavior changes, however, when the children´s competence in their second language increases. At the second semester, the children both show understanding of the teachers´ verbal turns and also display their non-understanding by initiating repair when they do not understand. Understanding of the teachers´ verbal turns, including their syntactic structure, is manifested in the ways the children tie their turns to the teachers´ turns. Recycling, on the other hand, proves to be the way by which the children start to speak the second language. In this study, the children´s common L1 is evidenced to be an important resource in interaction. It allows the children to participate in their individual ways and to share their experiences both with each other and with the teachers. It also enables them to co-construct conversations that lead to collaborative learning. Moreover, the uninhibited use of L1 proves to be an important analytic tool that makes the immersion data especially fruitful for conversation analytic research on second language learning, since the children´s interpretations of the second language are in evidence even when they do not speak the second language.