Seppo Tella

The Adoption of International Communications Networks and Electronic Mail into Foreign Language Education

ABSTRACT This article reports a study of the possibilities of communications networks and electronic mail (e‐mail) in foreign language (FL) teaching. The research model combined FL education and information technologies (communications networks and e‐mail). The study was a multisite ethnographic case study, with elements of exploratory, collaborative, change‐oriented field‐work‐based development research. The Finnish participants included six classes (Form 1 or 2) in three senior secondary schools, with four teachers of English. The foreign participants came mainly from schools in Britain and the USA. Data gathering techniques included a number of various qualitative methods. Introducing a technological innovation into FL classrooms was quite successful. The teachers realized that communications networks would soon be an integrated part of FL teaching, though incorporating them in the FL curriculum called for extra work. There was some change in methods of work, taking the authenticity of e‐mails into acc...

Foreign-language teaching and studying in Chilean and Finnish classrooms as seen by teachers

Abstract This article reports Chilean and Finnish foreign-language (FL) teachers’ perceptions of teaching and study realities in their own FL classrooms. Communicative language teaching (CLT) is used as the teaching–studying–learning methodological framework of an international KIELO project (= the acronym for Finnish “kieltenopetus” meaning “language teaching”), whose online survey was used to collect data for this article. We aim at answering the following research question: What are the FL teachers’ main approaches to teaching and studying in Chilean and Finnish FL classrooms and what is the FL classroom teaching and study reality like in these two countries? The data were collected from 83 Chilean and 147 Finnish FL teachers through an online survey covering 15 key themes of CLT and including 115 Likert-scale statements and 8 open-ended questions. In the descriptive data analysis, both Chilean and Finnish FL teachers claim that they encourage their students to use the target language considerably and that they use communicative oral tasks. For both groups of participants, however, teacher-centeredness and use of textbook score relatively high. The two-cluster analysis revealed a context-dependent cluster and a context-independent cluster. Context-dependent teachers tended to favor communicative oral tasks, real-life tasks and their own language tasks, whereas context-independent teachers favored more non-communicative tasks. Context-dependent teachers proved more student-centered than context-independent teachers. For Chilean and Finnish research participants, the use of mother tongue in foreign language classrooms appears to be an issue despite the growing need of foreign language communication.

Creating a virtual school based learning environment for the Finnish school

The purpose of this study was to first briefly analyse the concept of a virtual school. The aim of the empirical part was to exemplify how a virtual school based learning environment can be created and established in a Finnish educational context. For this purpose, a Finnish case study conducted in 1996-1997 as part of the activities of the European Observatory was analysed. The virtual school was seen by the participating teachers as a way to keep up with the latest trends in education and in information and communication technologies. It was also noticed that developing a new type of school and creating learning materials for it requires huge investments.