Browsing by Subject "suomen kieli"
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(2019)The purpose of my bachelor’s thesis was to describe the thoughts of children who speak both Finnish and Swedish as their first languages. I investigated how bilingual children make a language choice when interacting with peers. I also observed how code-switching from Finnish to Swedish appeared in children’s talk. My intent was to expand the understanding of language development of a bilingual child from an early education teacher’s view. The questions of my study were: 1. What thoughts do children who speak Finnish and Swedish as their first languages have about bilingualism? 2. How do bilingual children make a language choice when interacting with peers? 3. How does code-switching appear in children’s talk? My thesis was a qualitative study and as the study method I used a theme interview. I gathered the material by interviewing four simultaneously bilingual children aged six to eight who speak both Finnish and Swedish as their first languages. I analysed the material with content analysis. The study shows that children think their bilingualism is a natural part of their lives. They had thoughts about languages transferring from one generation to next. When interacting with peers children followed their joint language history and also negotiated what languages to use together. Appearance of code-switching was variable. Code-switching worked as a part of children’s language strategy to make discussion more fluent. The conclusion of the study is that bilingualism generally does not affect child’s language development. Children mainly do not feel that their bilingualism is a negative thing. Code-switching is a conscious language skill and strategy. In an interaction between bilingual children it is natural to speak both languages and negotiate together which languages to use.
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(2018)Goal. Lack of exposure to the Finnish language is a common problem for Finnish-speaking children living in the United States. These children having Finnish as their mother tongue, have to grow without a comprehensive exposure to Finnish. They also belong to a minority language group. To maintain and improve Finnish, children should have a need to use their language and opportunities to gain exposure to it. Often Finnish ends up being the weaker language and parents find keeping its level up difficult. The goal of this research is to find the challenges Finnish speaking parents are facing when maintaining or developing Finnish language in the U.S. In addition to this I will look into the reasons behind this and practical solutions to these problems. Methods. This research is a qualitative case study. The data consists of 17 answers for the questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey was done during the summer of 2016. The respondents were Finnish speaking parents, living in the U.S., whose children are / were the age of 6 or below during their stay. The respondents’ spouse’s mother tongue was not taken into account during the analysis. The data of the study was analyzed through content analysis methods. Results and conclusion. The research shows that the biggest challenges for the parents in maintaining their children’s ability to speak Finnish was largely focused on their need to use Finnish, a lack of varied exposure, quality of language, availability of native speech therapy services, and the problems focusing on language characteristics. The parents made sure to attempt to maintain the children’s Finnish language and their children’s choice was to primarily use English. According to the data, the challenges the parents face are varied and depend commonly on what kind of Finnish language exposure the children have a chance to live in, and what kind of standards the parents have for maintaining the children’s mother tongue. The higher the parents’ standards are in maintaining their children’s level of Finnish language, the more they are willing to work even when they are facing problems with their children’s mother tongue.
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