Browsing by Author "Salas Pérez, Lluvia Marysol"

Teaching English to Finnish-Spanish bilinguals: A case study The Finnish National Core curriculum has increasingly stressed the importance of learning and communicating in different languages, and many initiatives have been put in place to achieve this goal. In the past decades, English has gained an increased preference as the first compulsory language in Finland. According to Statistics Finland, eighty-three per cent of students in primary school study English, and the percentage of pupils studying English grew by nine points from the year 2019 to 2020. Additionally, nearly all students in lower secondary school studied English. This thesis investigates teachers’ opinions and experiences of teaching English to Finnish-Spanish bilingual pupils. For this study, bilingual pupils refer to the students that are selected to study in the Finnish-Spanish bilingual programme in a school in Finland. These pupils are of diverse bilingual backgrounds and hence fall under different definitions of “bilingual”. The subject of this study are three English teachers with similar work experience but teaching different grades at the same school. The research material was obtained through face-to-face semi-structured interviews in addition to written communication. The material included about four hours of audio and one email communication that was translated and transcribed, after which it was categorised and divided into themes. The resulting data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results show that teachers have witnessed pupils show an increased interest and openness in learning English, and that they perceive bilingual pupils to have linguistic advantages that facilitate language acquisition. Nevertheless, there are bilinguals that find studying a new language difficult. Considering the results, it can be argued that bilingual programmes offer a possibility for encouraging communication in different languages. However, it was brought to light that other languages have begun to suffer neglect, due to the prevalence of English as a preferred language among other reasons. In addition, the study offers proposals for diverse approaches to encouraging multilingualism and supporting heritage languages.