Toka suomi - digiharjoitukset / Second Finnish – digital exercises

2018

Lecturers
Students

Bioscience
Sustainability

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Finnish

Finnish

A2
B1

Activity/task

Vocabulary
Grammar
Prosody

Listening
Speaking
Writing
Reading

TToka suomi – Toka Finnish digital exercises are is a complementary digital exercises site for Finnish as a second language students. These exercises complement the book Toka suomi but they can very well be used also on their own. The material contains vocabulary specially for Finnish culture and nature, history, geography and biology. The digital exercises practice, in particular, reading comprehension in a variety of ways. The tasks begin with easy word recognition and then proceed progressively to more challenging language and text comprehension tasks. The material offers multiple-choice assignments, sentence extensions. The material focuses also on exercise on all types of assignments that often occur in further studies and exams in different subjects of the learners. The material has been prepared for Finnish as a second language and it suits for different learners from basic education to adults. The learner may choose to do tasks independently selecting the ones that match his or her skill level.

This resource was used as part of a language practice lesson with intermediate level Finnish language students, who are part of a three-year course of study in Foreign Languages and Literatures. The main objective of the lesson was to expand the vocabulary relating to nature, with specific reference to the Finnish context, through various types of exercises. Within the macro-theme proposed by the teacher, students were given the opportunity to choose a specific unit to focus on and the choice fell on the unit "Suomalaisessa metsässä" (“In Finnish forest, chapter 1). The exercises were carried out following the proposed sequential order, one after the other. The repetition of key words and expressions and the working on the same contents from different angles favored the memorization of the new terminology by the students. The exercises carried out - some of which characterized by a playful approach - offered the students a fun way of dealing with complex contents and learning a specific technical language (e.g. botany), with which, moreover, one rarely comes into contact in everyday life. The resource, combining grammar and vocabulary exercises, allowed students to develop different linguistic skills and abilities, listening and vocabulary above all. This resource also admirably combines Finnish language and culture and this aspect has had a decidedly positive impact on the students; the presentation through the exercises of typical Finnish language elements and expressions, for example, became the prerequisite for carrying out insights into Finnish culture in a broad sense, quite stimulating for students, also attracted by the concrete connection of the topics with reality. Particularly effective and motivating were the exercises of association between words and images. The variety and diversification of the proposed activities, the graphics as well as the appropriate length of the exercises have established a good pace of action and have helped to keep the attention and concentration of students always high. It should be noted that the graphics (linear, clean, pleasant, clear; beautiful colors, cheerful, not annoying; all well separated; simple and beautiful drawings) is also optimal for students with mild dyslexia problems. Students must already have a good level of Finnish to fully exploit the potential of this resource.

1. Select the topic of interest from the main menu.
2. You can proceed through the exercises in order one by one or move between exercises using the menu bar in the upper left angle of the site.