Browsing by Author "Pohjoismäki, Heidi"

The goal of this thesis was to research the interaction in Finnish as a second language lessons and the support of visual elements to the students and to the use of Finnish vocabulary in the classroom. In the thesis it was researched how the students possibly use the visual elements in the classroom to help them to find a specific Finnish word. The aim of this thesis was also to research if the assignments the students did during the lesson might helped them to learn Finnish vocabulary. There are only few studies on the support of the visual elements in the classroom and to the students learning. The data was collected as a part of the Long Second research project. The lessons were recorded twice a week in 2011-2012 in instruction preparing for basic education lessons. The data of this thesis was recorded in January and February 2012. The lessons consisted the human body and it's functions. In this thesis was used four Finnish as a second language lessons. There were five to six students in each lesson and they were 7 to 12 years old when the lessons were recorded. The data was transcribed and analyzed using the methods of the conversation analysis. In the classroom there is rich interaction between the students and with the teacher but also with using the support of the visual elements. Using the methods of the conversation analysis examples was presented where the students used the visual elements to support their interaction in the classroom. On the basis of the collected data, it seems that the visual elements in the classroom might support the learning and remembering of the Finnish vocabulary of the students. Furthermore it seems that the student's assignments done during the lesson possibly support the interaction of the students and help them to constitute a joined understanding on a subject.