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Database of Teaching Sources

A database of selected, reviewed, tested, assessed and validated e-learning based language teaching sources addressed to Higher education students for the learning of 18 different European languages.

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A Taste of Finnish

Date of Publication

n/a

Target Group

Students

Domain Area

Accounting
Arts & Music
Bioscience
Business & Communication
Engineering
International Relations
Journalism & multimedia
Law
Medicine & Nursing
Sustainability
Teacher Education
Tourism

Learning Scenario

Autonomous learning

Target Language

Finnish

Language of Instruction

English
Finnish

CEFR level

A1

Type of Material

Guiding resources (online course/book)

Linguistic Features

Vocabulary
Grammar
Pragmatics
Prosody

Skills

Listening
Speaking
Writing
Reading

Description

A Taste of Finnish is an online language course designed for university students planning to come to study in Finland for a term or two. The course is also useful for students already in Finland in addition to classroom activities. The material consists of ten chapters, each including three lessons with short texts, dialogues, exercises and grammar. The material starts with a short introduction to the Finnish language. The chapters concentrate on situations of interest for international students, such as dormitory and campus. The chapters are short and offer the essential information and general Finnish language competences for foreign students of any academic field. One of the sections is dedicated to essential grammar presented in the lessons.

Case study

This resource was used as a support material during an introductory language practice lesson for a class of 8 beginner Finnish students participating in a three-year study course in Foreign Languages and Literatures. In particular, we used the “Introduction to the Finnish language” section in its entirety. The lesson focused on the illustration of the main characteristics of the Finnish language (in a comparative-contrastive perspective with respect to the Italian language) and on pronunciation and had among its objectives that of allowing students to familiarize themselves with the sounds of Finnish. The use of this resource, complementary to the previous / preliminary theoretical explanations of the teacher, allowed the students to effectively consolidate the first indispensable knowledge of the Finnish language and to become familiar, through practice and repetition (with exercises of the type “listen and repeat”), with its “sound aspects” (vowels and consonants - long and short -, accent, intonation). The students were enthusiastic about putting themselves to the test and adhered well to the proposed activities, also thanks to the possibility of repeating the sounds all together, in groups, which created a fruitful musical effect in the classroom and allowed individual students to overcome the individual fear of "making mistakes". Particularly appreciated and useful in making it clear that the quantity of sounds in Finnish is distinctive were the funniest and "ironic" examples (eg: tapaan 'I meet', tapan 'I kill'). Very useful resource also for the review and the autonomous consolidation, in its own time.

Guidelines

You can follow the tips for studying available in the section “About this course”. Start the course by going through the introduction to the Finnish language. Then proceed through the material chapter to chapter. Listen to the dialogues and practice pronunciation by reading the dialogues after listening or together with the reader.

Review

Category
Rate
Comprehensive approach
Capacity to match the needs of lecturers and students

4

Added value
The provided tangible improvements

4

Motivation enhancement
The capacity to motivate students to improve their language skills

4

Innovation
Effectiveness in introducing innovative, creative and previously unknown approaches to LSP learning

3

Transferability
Measurement of the transferable potential and possibility to be a source of further capitalisation/application for other language projects in different countries

3

Skills assessment and validation
Availability of appropriate tools for lecturers to monitor students’ progress and for students to assess own progress and to reflect on learning

2

Adaptability
Flexibility of the contents and possibilities for the LSP lecturers to adapt the contents to their and to students’ need

3

Usability
Assess the technical usability from the point of view of the lecturer and the student

5

Accessibility
Assess the accessibility from the point of view of the lecturer and the student

5

Comments:
This teaching source is very useful material on Finnish language for specific purposes not easily available for Finnish as a second or foreign language. Even if it is not in an technically advanced format, it offers a valid help for business and administration students during studies. The material allows different approaches for teacher and for students to work on and it may be exploited both online and offline, in classroom context and autonomously. It is easily adaptable for different kinds of courses and tasks. The material does not give any initial guidelines for learning activities so the teacher guidance to the use of the material can be useful.
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