A compulsory foreign language in Finland starts now in Grade 1 instead of Grade 3. The change has forced teachers to adopt new teaching methods. As young learners are not yet literate, teaching should focus on oral skills and awareness of diversity. Video data from 19 early foreign language lessons of five English, German, or French teachers in…

Adopting the methods of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates that adult second language (L2) users with emergent literacy formulate requests as 'complex multimodal Gestalts' consisting prototypically of deictic or depictive gestures combined with gaze, situationally relevant material, and vocal or linguistic resources. The…

This article examines how second language (L2) interactional competence is manifested in students' use of "and"-prefaced turns when doing meaning-focused oral tasks in pairs and small groups. Drawing on video recordings from English-as-a-foreign-language upper-secondary classes recorded in Czechia and Finland, 86 sequences involving…

Technology development allows new ways of communication, learning and collaboration. This is reflected in the professional scenarios of language teaching. Modern curricula value participants' interest and meaningful (inter)action as a basis for learning. Sensitivity is important in anticipating participants' changing needs in modern learning…

This research presents a virtual exchange project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland with 26 participants who were intermediate German language students. During the project, the students used a closed Facebook group to post about given topics; the posts combined video, audio, and text that adhered to multimodal…

This reflective practice paper presents an excerpt of the outcome of a telecollaboration project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland. Twenty-six intermediate students of German in the two countries used a Facebook-group to write about given topics which were part of their final assessment. The posts were a combination of…

This study focuses on the social actions taken around English language by a 12-year-old Finnish schoolboy, Simo, and his family members in the course of living their everyday life at home. The paper asks how everyday life learning opportunities are related to both in-class and out-of-class English-language learning. The multiple data (e.g. media…

Immersion education in Finland is a one-way (monolingual) early total Swedish programme for Finnish-speaking students. This immersion provision is offered at kindergarten level (ages 3-5), at preschool (age 6) and at primary levels (grades 1-9). Here, a brief synthesis of Finnish research studies on the early years in Swedish immersion is first…

The aim of this paper is to outline classroom tandem by comparing it with informal tandem learning contexts and other language instruction methods. Classroom tandem is used for second language instruction in mixed language groups in the subjects of Finnish and Swedish as L2. Tandem learning entails that two persons with different mother tongues…

The "MustLearnIT" European-funded research project with partners in Greece, Poland, Cyprus, Finland and the UK aimed to investigate ways of teaching and learning modern foreign languages (MFL) to early learners in small/remote primary schools where there were no specialist MFL teachers. This was to be carried out through new technologies…

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the…