Review of "Speaking English in Finnish content based classrooms." by T. Nikula

Journal Article Summary of “Speaking English in Finnish content based classrooms”

Ray Etheridge

Western Washington University

Nikula, T., (2007) Speaking English in Finnish content based classrooms. World Englishes, 26:2, 206-233.
Review

The article deals with the process known in Finland as CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Instruction, a process in which the students are taught a non-language arts class in English rather than their native Finnish tongue. While I admit it may seem a strange choice for teaching in American classes I find that an outsiders view of a situation is often very helpful in understanding and clarifying problems and thoughts related to subjects or concepts that we may take for granted here. The authors’ main goal is to investigate the effective of CLIL and learn how students use or claim ownership of the language in these classes and how it affects the classroom as a learning environment. Research was carried out to understand how students utilized the language and what can be learned from it for teaching in general.
The grade level for the research was 13 to 15 year old students’, male and female students were involved in the study and ability levels varied considerably, although Finnish students typically score very high on standardized tests, the authors clearly point out that knowledge of English as a popular language is new in Finland, having only surpassed German as the most popular choice for a secondary language in the late 1990’s. The data were gathered during eight lessons of ninety minutes each in two classes with a total of 15 students involved in 53 different lessons involving students. Entire sessions were recorded so the study is an in-depth study of a small number of students, and while this is a weakness of the study, the total time under observation is 720 minutes times 15 students, or 180 hours of recorded audio and visual evidence that was involved in the study-a considerable period of time.
The results of the study showed that the students clearly valued the opportunity to learn in English and that, contrary to expectations when language difficulties presented themselves, most students did not resort to using their native language for intellectual or scholastic reasons but rather for emotional or contextual ones. In other words, the students felt that having a biology course or physics course in a foreign language was a privilege or treat and one that they enjoyed and in which they voluntarily choose to continue speaking English, even when it would have been easier to revert to their mother tongue.
It is important to note that the students in the CLIL classes were not being evaluated on their language skills when they were not being graded on their mastery of English. In other words it, was a low-stake environment. They choose to speak English over their native tongue before the class started and engaged in small conversations in English among themselves as well as while speaking to the teacher. When there is no explicit focus on the language, the students chose to use it, to make the language their own, or claim ownership of it, a trait most notably shown when students who were quite fluent in both languages starting mixing the two languages together in order to express complex thoughts or ideas that seem to be better expressed in one or the other of the language. This activity, known as code switching, such as using the more exacting Finnish words for weather and atmosphere as part of an otherwise perfectly acceptable English sentence on wind, shows that the students had reached a level of understanding of and comfort with English even before reaching a level of complete fluency. The only other time students typical resorted to use of their mother tongue was when emotions were involved. If the student got frustrated or overly excited, or they wanted to express something in an emotively manner, as opposed to a rationally manner did they commonly resort to the use of their native language.
In summary the paper reports that students can “claim ownership” of a language best when they interact with the language not just directly as a language course, which the authors admit is important to build up the basic skills of the language, but are able to do so when the atmosphere of learning is informal, creative, interactive and playful, encouraging both official and off-the-record usage of the language outside of the formal class setting itself. Thus the teaching of the language at this point in the classroom is one of a complementary practice to the formal class instruction and it is during this time that the students are allowed and encouraged to use the language and seek mastery of it free from the pressures, fears and difficulties associated with formal lessons and exact plans, goals and evaluation criterion.
Now, as for the analysis of this study I feel that it has both many weaknesses and strengths. Clearly the sample size is a problem. I would like to see far more students studied and far more classes involved and obviously these studies need to occur in America somewhere. So the location of the study is a problem as well, while humans are human the world around nation and culture may mean that these lessons and ideas may not translate well to the American classroom. Still the study does offer some interesting ideas and challenges some of our notions of what it means to be a teacher and how content literacy can or should be taught. The students chose to use the language, they clearly valued the experience, it was something they were encouraged to make their own and something they could see that had value. Rather than creating ever more exact standards, guidelines, EARL’s, GLE’s and ever increasingly complex techniques for measuring, evaluating and testing students not only on the content but the mastery of the language itself, should we not encourage students to make the subjects their own, particularly in regards to instruction of ELL students, and to do so in a low stress and positive environment.
Finally, it is noteworthy is that teaching content language literacy should be seen as a positive and conscious opportunity or noteworthy advantage rather than a chore or onerous task by the student. We should not attempt to slip this in past them but rather embrace it and get them involved in the process of wanting it in order to make it effective as seen in the recent demand for English in such a far away nation as Finland. Clearly the students involved in this study perceive the value of fluency in English, a priority that many of our own native speakers seem not to share. As for the complexity of how to effectively integrate teaching and multilingual mastery and combine the rational and emotional or passionate sides to the teaching world, we can see from this study that attempts to separate them seem to be both impossible and even undesirable, but such a revelation only points us in a direction that we might have only been able to perceive if we allowed others to be the basis for a look in at teaching our own language.