Browsing by Author "Hagelberg, Emmi"

As the number of Finns moving abroad rises, more knowledge is needed about the needs of expatriate Finns. Finnish language schools are an important network of Finnish communities all around the globe, as well as a well established support system to help families with the multilingual upbringing of their children. However, there is very little recent research on Finnish language schools, especially the experiences of students. There is also very little research on the language identity of Finnish expatriate children, although Finnish language schools are supposed to support their students’ multilingual identities. Therefore in order to further develop and improve Finnish language schools, we need more information on children’s experiences regarding Finnish language schools and their language identities. This study aims to find out things that Finnish expatriate children bring up in regards to their experiences of Finnish language schools and their language identities: what experiences do expatriate Finnish children have of Finnish language schools, and what is their experience of their language identity. Seven young expatriate Finns (ages 6 to 11) were interviewed for this study. All children had lived most or all of their life outside Finland, and all had attended Finnish language schools. The study was conducted from a phenomenological approach. The analysis was done as qualitative analysis of content. All in all the interviewees has positive experiences regarding Finnish language schools. They mostly enjoyed attending classes and felt that they learned or benefited from them. According to the interviewees’ experiences, the activities done in Finnish language schools are quite diverse, and the children enjoyed doing active and varied things. The importance of Finnish language schools as communities arose as well. The interviewees expressed strong multilingual identities, and different languages had clear roles in their lives. From these results we can interpret that Finnish language schools offer a positive Finnish-speaking environment, which can help strengthen Finnish expatriate children’s self image as speakers of the Finnish language, and therefore support the role of the Finnish language in their language identity.