In this chapter, I explore the opportunities that migrant mothers in Finland have for learning the local language, Finnish, in their day-to-day environment. To do this I draw on ethnographic data, collected between 2012 and 2018, comprising interviews, observations, field notes, audio-recorded interaction situations, and photographs taken by the…

This study examines the experiences of two Pakistani doctoral researchers at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU), Finland, highlighting the disconnect between the university's internationalization policies and the realities faced by non-Western students. Employing autoethnography, the study reveals systemic Eurocentric biases and linguistic…

This design case describes three iterative development phases of online integration training design from 2015 to 2021. Online integration training is a public educational service for adult immigrants who are registered as unemployed in Finland. The learners are from diverse backgrounds, typically residing in sparsely populated areas or unable to…

This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data…

This article focuses on how Finnish CLIL teachers and students orient to and experience diversity in CLIL. The data consist of teacher and student interviews that were analysed using qualitative content analysis to identify recurrent themes with regard to diversity. The findings indicate that the theme of equality in the sense of 'the same for…

As policy agents, teachers are involved in representing and reproducing language education policies in their talk, practices and classroom interaction. Contemporary Finland and its education system are experiencing times of change from the increased globalisation and dynamic flows of migration. This has affected the most recent Finnish curriculum…

The present study discusses the relevance of measures of lexical diversity (LD) to the assessment of learner corpora. It also argues that existing measures of LD, many of which have become specialized for use with language corpora, are fundamentally measures of lexical repetition, are based on an etic perspective of language, and lack construct…

This study investigated the relationship between the English language competence of Finnish bilingual pupils and school-external factors such as parental expectations, home involvement, and exposure to English outside the classroom. Data on the pupils' language competence was collected from n?=?122 6th graders in bilingual education, and compared…

This study takes an experimental approach to "lingua receptiva" (LaRa), a communication mode in which interlocutors each use their own--different--native language. In contrast to previous work on LaRa, this study investigates the phenomenon in genetically unrelated languages. Native speakers of Estonian and Russian were engaged in a…

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of "Big Brother Finland," a reality TV show, whose main…

This study investigates intergroup homogeneity within high intermediate and advanced L2 writers of English from Czech, Finnish, German, and Spanish first language backgrounds. A variety of linguistic features related to lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion were used to compare texts written by L1 speakers of English to L2…

We investigated reading and writing in two domestic languages (Swedish and Finnish) and one foreign language (English) among multilingual university students with (n = 20) versus without dyslexia (n = 20). Our analyses encompassed overall speed and accuracy measures and an in-depth analysis of grapheme-phoneme-grapheme errors and inflectional…

What causes dyslexia, and how does it manifest across languages? As bilingualism becomes increasingly important globally, these questions have never been more critical--and this comprehensive volume from The Dyslexia Foundation explores them in unprecedented depth. Bringing together the best brain-based, genetics, and behavioral research in the…

This paper reviews developments and future challenges in language policy, planning and assessment in Finland, where several important changes in legislation, curricula and assessment systems have recently taken place. Language proficiency requirement of immigrants and civil servants have been redefined, school curricula have been revised and new…

Proficiency in a second language (L2) may depend upon the age of exposure and the continued use of the mother tongue (L1) during L2 acquisition. The effect of early L2 exposure on the preattentive perception of native and non-native vowel contrasts was studied by measuring the mismatch negativity (MMN) response from 14-year-old children. The test…