Browsing by Subject "maahanmuuttajaoppilaat"

The aim of this study was to observe immigrant students success in finnish as a second language school subject and to find out which background factors were affecting it. The ob- ject of the study is success in finnish as a second language subject and in particular the af- fect of the students attitudes toward the subject. Previous studies have shown that many dif- ferent background factors have an impact when it comes to second language learning, but attitude seems to be the only one on which school and society have an impact. This thesis was conducted as a systematic literature review aiming to search the different background factors that are affecting immigrant students success in finnish as a second language subject, concentrating especially on attitude as a background factor. Two doctoral dissertations, one peer reviewed article and one report of the ministry of education were se- lected for my review. The studies were published between 2007 and 2015. This study shows that factors such as age, gender, first language of the immigrant, time spent in new country and the level of education of the parents have all an inpact on immigrant students success in learning finnish as a second language. Studies indicate also that attitude towards finnish language and finnish as a second language subject have an impact not only on success in the subject, but on desire to be part of the finnish community. Some of the students felt that as a subject finnish as a second language was stigmatising, but in general the attitudes towards the subject were positive. The attitude towards finnish language in general was favourable as well. This study shows that the immigrant group is very homogeneous and forming a universal language learning profile was impossible. When all the independant factors that were mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph are taken into account, the studies indicate that the knowladge of the finnish language amongst immigrants was good.