Some practical tips!

How to boost your language learning? Whatever the target language, in order for you to learn, you need to be motivated! There has to be a reason for you to learn the language be it related to work, relationships, travelling or something else. If the motivation is there, things will get much easier. Where there's a will, there's a way! 

1) Learning new vocabulary

• Not all vocabulary is the same. If you are a beginner, start with the 100 most common words in the target language. Whenever possible, try to use them. The best way to learn vocabulary is to talk, talk and talk. I believe we learn most through actively participating. Be also ready to accept that you'll make mistakes, it's totally OK. All language learners have been there, including me.
• Challenge yourself to learn 1-20 new words every. Even if you went for only one word a day, you'd still end up with 365 new words a year! If you did 20 words a day, well, then wow! That would lead to 7,300 new words a year! Depending on how you like to practise, you can, for example, jot the words down in a notebook or use Quizlet to create different vocabulary sets. Quizlet is easy and fun to use, you can choose whether you want to just read or listen to the words, or if you'd like to give a try at writing or playing games (btw. I'm not being paid by Quizlet, I just think it's a great help for language learning). Make learning new words a routine, you can really make great improvements in a short period of time. 
• As said before, it's good to talk. Always aim to use the new vocabulary. If there's no one to talk to, talk to yourself! Or to your pet, or to your plants. Just make sure you talk!
• Use a pocket dictionary, there are so many apps where to choose from! 
• Spend time reading in the target language. Whether you are at the beginners level or already at the advanced level, this will increase your vocabulary and familiarize you with the structures of the language. 

2) Improving your listening comprehension skills

• Whenever possible communicate with the target language as much as you can. There really is no substitute for this. 
• Listen to the target language as much as you can, choose something that really interests you: podcasts, audiobooks, radio programmes, TV, Netflix, music, etc. The more interest you have towards the material, the more you want to do the listening. Make it fun and interesting! Get used to the rhythm of the target language. If you are a beginner, then you can start by listening to useful phrases. 
• The internet is full of excellent material for language learning. In fact, at the moment I'm teaching a course for upper intermediate and advanced level EFL learners and I have gathered some excellent websites for my students to improve their listening skills. I'll share these super great tips in my following post. Until then have a great time learning!

Best, Minna

What are your best tips for improving your language learning?

Good old learning stations!

I’m a big fan of learning stations. They are great for letting students choose what to do, in which order and they are also a very natural way to differentiate teaching. I also very much like that students work in small groups and help each other. Learning stations naturally also allow the teacher to go around and be of help when needed. 

Since September my students have been learning Finnish at an overwhelming pace. This week they started to study vocabulary on Finnish nature. Here are a few glimpses of our Friday’s stations.

• Increase your vocabulary with Quizlet. Choose the themes you wish to practise: nature, trees, birds, animals in the forest, insects
• Study the vocabulary and play a game of domino.
• Start studying the text (challenging).
• Go out and find the following trees. Photograph them and show your findings to the rest of the group. Test if they know which trees you captured.

My favourite station this time was the one that took the students outside the classroom to explore surrounding nature. It was a sunny day, too! 

Speaking about nature, can you believe that Finland has 187 888 lakes!

A game of domino

Learning vocabulary with Quizlet. A picture of one of the 187 888 lakes in Finland.

Do you know what this tree is in Finnish? Check it out here.
Photo taken by a student in my group.

A study programme for immigrants aged 17–25 without school leaving certificate

A new term is about to start in our school! This week we’ll be interviewing and choosing new students to our study programme which is officially called instruction for preparing for basic education. Basically it is a one-year-programme for young adults aged between 17-25 who have recently arrived in Finland and who don’t have a school leaving certificate from their home countries. They don’t need to have previous knowledge of Finnish but they need to be literate (if they aren’t, we also have courses for illiterate adult immigrants). I think this is an excellent opportunity for a young adult to start a new chapter in his or her life in a new country by learning the language, getting to know how the new society works and exploring what options there are for the future. We also have a strong emphasis on developing each student’s learning skills and helping them to find their true potential as learners. 

This is, in brief, what their their school year is made of:

• Finnish studies: starting level 0, target level A1.3-A2.2
• preparatory courses in mathematics
• preparatory courses in natural sciences
• preparatory courses in social studies
• preparatory courses in English
• fine arts
• field trips
• ICT-skills 
• introduction to the Finnish school system with the focus on the students’ own interests and study plans

I’m running out of superlatives when thinking about the students who completed the programme last May. I’m also so very pleased that they all are now carrying on with their studies, which means they reached the language level required for entering the basic education for adults. This is fantastic news given the fact that most of them started the term last September with little or no knowledge of the Finnish language. I was happy to see their skills develop in so many ways during the school year.

Before starting to write about this up-coming term, here are a few highlights of the last weeks of May with my highly motivated students I had the privilege to work with for the entire school year. I wish them all the best and all the happiness in the world!

Getting a hands-on experience on how to prepare Finnish bun at Fazer. 

Learning about the biggest chocolate factory in Finland.

Ending the tour with our goodie bags.

Learning about underwater world in Sea Life.

The students practised theme-related vocabulary on Quizlet before the field trip.

Celebrating and saying farewells at the end of the school year.

Listening comprehension summer course: Links for EFL learners!

Greetings from our summer courses!

For more than a decade our school has organized high school summer courses in various subjects such as English, Swedish, Finnish, Biology, Geography, Health Studies, History, Chemistry and Mathematics. This summer we had 24 courses with approximately 25-35 students per course. Now this is what I call motivation! 

Here in headphone land. Photo thanks to clemsonunivlibrary 

This summer I was in charge of the listening comprehension courses which are one of my favourite ones (well, they all are to be honest). To cut a long story short, the during the two-week-course the students practised for the up-coming national examination. We covered all possible exercise types listed by the National Board of Matriculation Examination. This includes:

• multiple choice questions both in English or in the language of instruction ie. Finnish or Swedish

• open questions in English or in the language of instruction

• a summary based on what you hear

I enjoyed planning and teaching this course. All EFL teachers in Finnish high schools know that it is seldom possible to concentrate on one particular area throughout the whole course, but with this course it was possible. The main focus was to improve students' listening skills and expand their vocabularies. The students who took the course were there for this specific reason so clearly they were very motivated and ready to learn.

Our school organised 24 summer courses for high schoolers in June 2015.

We concentrated on one exercise type at a time and students had the opportunity to test different techniques when carrying out the exercises. In addition, we practised previous years' listening comprehension test. The students had a chance to listen to the tests independently at their own pace, which got great feedback from them. They also frequently commented how they feel more confident to face the challenging exam now that they are prepared for it and know what to expect.

The national listening comprehension test. You can also find them on the net.

We also used some material on the net. Here are some links with brief descriptions of each site. I think they are great for practising listening skills and expanding vocabulary:

• BBC Learning English: Words in the news video stories: A great site for EFL and ESL learners scroll down a bit for the video stories and see for yourself!

• English in a minute: Short videos that explain idioms and often also their origins.

• BBC Learning English: The English we speak: Dialogues that shed light on the English idioms and colloquial expressions. I advise students to listen to these with the scripts.

• Yle news in English. Yle is a national Finnish broadcasting company.

• LBC 97,3: A talkradio that focuses on everyday news and issues.

• An example of the national matriculation examination test. This test is from 2006, soon this test type will be in history as the national exams will be reformed starting from autumn 2016.

• English Lab: Students can choose the level they want to practise: easy, medium, difficult

• For students preparing for the Finnish matriculation examination there are also a variety of listening comprehension exercises available. One of the best known is probably abitreenit.

There is an excellent blog for preparing students for the national exam, it also includes a posting on listening skills. Studying this was one piece of homework in our listening course (the blog is in Finnish). Additionally, if students wanted to practise test-related vocabulary, they could do that with the help of Quizlet. 

After these intensive courses it feels great to start the summer holidays!

Wishing you all a lovely summer! See you again in the autumn!

Have a relaxing summer!

For the Finnish-speaking readers

Isn't it always nice when somebody is interested in knowing what actually happens in your classroom?  Yesterday our principal came to observe my lessons as part of her own studies. This is the report she wrote about what happened in the classroom. The link is in Finnish: Tvt tiedonhaussa ja soveltamisessa

Quizlet with photos

A few words about Quizlet: It is so great for learning languages!

As an EFL teacher, I have used Quizlet a lot with English-Finnish-English phrases and words. This term I am mainly teaching Finnish as a second language for young adults. I will be teaching EFL for them later in the spring term but as for now, the focus is on the Finnish language. They don’t all speak English so I had to give up using translations. Instead I am using photos, and it is working really well.

Using Quizlet image search is such a time saver! In addition, it is great how the photo sources are listed below each set.

I only now discovered the folders, which makes it easier to find a certain set. However, it seems to me that my folders are visible only to me, my students can’t see them. Can anybody shed some light on this? Is it so? Or perhaps the folder function requires logging in? So far, my new students haven’t done that.

The only disappointment with using photos instead of translations has been the reduced amount of study modes (Cards, Learn, Speller, Test, Scatter, Space Race) when studying the vocabularies on iPads. I was looking forward to the students having a go at Scatter but instead they got a notification “You cannot play scatter because there are images for every definition. Please try another mode.”

Having said that, I still think Quizlet is awesome. Easy and simple to use, very efficient and also so much fun for the students with the competitive side of it! And I love the idea of sharing!

If you want to have a go at practising the sights in Helsinki, click here. 

Or have a try with the colours in Finnish.

Helsinki sightseeing

Part III: Experiences with Tabletkoulu

Part III: Some highlights from the previous school year

Last year my colleague from another school and I decided to take a challenge. We started creating an online EFL course with a Finnish start-up company called Tabletkoulu. The pedagogy and underlying guidelines behind this company are inspiring to say the least. The courses are based on methods such as flipped learning, phenomenon-based learning, game-based learning, project-based learning, co-operative learning and self-directed learning. I have always been excited about the possibilities that educational technology has brought to language learning, so it seemed like a natural step to be involved in creating learning material that would benefit from these developments.

What fascinates me are the opportunities to make language alive through authentic learning material and learning experiences, the almost overwhelming world of interacting and sharing, and learning from others. In addition to this, I can see the potential that educational technology has in truly embracing all kinds of language learners with so many individually tailored ways to study.

In the spring term 2014 our course ENA3 Study and work was still under construction but I wanted to test some parts of it with my students. To cut a very long story short, here are some random observations on using the material:

•  The students worked either on computers or iPads. They worked either on their own, in pairs, in small groups and at times I was instructing them.
• This is what the table of contents of the course looks like:

  

  Table of contents

  
  

• Because of the time restrictions we only had time to study sections two and three. In addition to this, we studied grammar whenever it felt natural. For example, the course material has several interviews with direct questions. They were easily converted into indirect questions, and we observed what it did to the word order. Similarly, when writing a CV or a covering letter, you naturally use adjectives. This is when we also studied how to use comparison and quantifiers.
• Not all my students enjoy speaking in English, thus writing their comments on discussion forum encouraged them to use the language without being too stressed about the pronunciation, for example. 
• The material has many exercises that encourage students to co-operate and get out of the classroom, for example, to make interviews, record them and use the target language. Each exercise has also a discussion forum. This turned out to be really handy because it made the conversation visible if needed. 
•  I was surprised to see how engaging the exercises were. As the students were doing them, they were able to gain points after finishing each exercise. This motivated them to collect more points. Encouraged by this, we then decided that the exercise points would be added to their course exam points (course exam consisted of a listening comprehension test and four short theme-related essays). Thus, the actual work done during the course became a visible factor in the student evaluation. 
• While some students were really quick in moving from one exercise to another, others struggled with them. I found myself being more aware of the difficulties the students had as I could follow their progress in their portfolios. As many students carried on doing the exercises independently, I had more time to help those who had difficulties. 
• The platform allowed teachers to add their own material in it. This was a great feature! For example, when studying school related vocabulary, I thought it was important for my students to be able to speak about their own school in English. So I was able to add material that was specific for my students. The students themselves also participated in searching the material, for example, finding relevant vocabulary on our school English website.
• The material also includes exercises which introduce the students to the use of, for example Twitter, LinkedIn and Khan Academy.
• The platform also enables collaboration between the teachers who are using the same course material. You can start a conversation not only with your own group of students but also nationwide with all the users. I had no chance to try this out. It would be interesting, though and I very much like the idea of teachers sharing their ideas and experiences. 
•  The theme-related vocabulary on study and work for the course can be found on Quizlet. Click here to see the vocabulary sets.
• My students are big fans of Quizlet (well, most of them are :) At some point there was a huge race of the gold medal in Scatter and Space Race. The students got so into practising the vocabulary that it was their wish to have more vocabulary testing. For this purpose I used, for example, Socrative or pair work with word definitions.
•  All in all, I enjoyed using the course material and the feedback from the students was mainly positive. However, some students told me after the course that they would prefer to have “something concrete to hold in their hands” after the course. Some of them printed the vocabularies on Quizlet to ease this anxiety.

To see how some parts of the course material look like, take a look at these photos.

The topic of today?

Surveying bullying

2.2 Schools abroad

What is studying like in ... ?

We can work it out!

The right kind of applicant

Careers

Professional working proficiency test

4.2. Learner profiles

Extrovert, introvert - does it matter?

By myself

Speaker's corner

Project: Education news

I love learning new words

Practice makes perfect

If you want to learn more about Tabetkoulu, check out their website here. The link is in Finnish but all the team members speak English.

Part I: One step towards going paperless - Studying a course without the traditional course book

Part I: Some highlights from the previous school year

I wanted to try something different with my students. So I asked them how they’d feel about the idea of studying the course without a course book, and their response was positive. I’d taught this course several times before, therefore I was pretty familiar with the contents and objectives outlined in the curriculum and felt quite confident in saying goodbye to the course book for a while. Our course was called ENA7 Nature and Sustainable Development, and we used Google Sites to complete the project.

We had access to computers as well as iPads so I wanted to make use of them. The project for the students was to create their own website on a course-related topic. They needed to do some background studying, learn new vocabulary, find suitable photos and videos or create them by themselves. To make their sites more reader-friendly, they also created a glossary on essential vocabulary and added some questions for their peers to comment on.

As we know, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some photos of their work (they kindly gave me the permission to publish them here).

This is the home page with the students' topics on the left-hand margin.

An example of one site (a part of it)

Some students used word clouds to create illustration for the site.

An example of a glossary

Some questions for the fellow-students

I was really pleased to see the intensity of their studying. The students seemed to read more and with more enthusiasm than what they normally did with the course book (which, by the way, is awesome, too!).

Summa summarum, these were the benefits in my view:

• Apart from a few texts I chose for all the students to study, they chose the majority of their own reading. This gave them an opportunity to critically evaluate the information offered. 
• Being able to choose the topic for their project gave them a sense of ownership of their own learning. It was great to watch them work with their topics with such motivation. Everybody didn’t have to do exactly the same thing. I really liked the fact that the students could find the topics (within the course theme) that they found interesting. The learning process started from their own interests, and it was not something that the teacher decided for them.
• They were in total control of their own websites and they could make them look as they wanted to. Again: ownership of their own learning.
• Some of them wanted me to take a look at their texts before publishing them, this was easily done by sharing their work with me on Google Docs.
• Later they studied the other students’ projects and gave feedback on them. I think it was important for them to get feedback from their peers. Since this was already their seventh course, they had had plenty of practice with this.
• In case any of my Finnish colleagues are interested in knowing how the evaluation worked, this is how we did it: the project (100 points), the listening comprehension test (a previous year’s national exam 90 p.), vocabulary and grammar exercises and additional reading (110p.). So the students could gain max. 300 points of the whole course and those points were then turned into a school grade as usual.

Some other observations:

• Young students seem to be using their smartphones and iPads a lot for entertaining purposes. However, I think many still need guidance and advice on how to use their devices for learning. There are some many possibilities for that!
• I can’t put enough emphasis on copyright issues. As mentioned before, this was already our seventh course together, and I had started to talk about copyrights already from course one. For some reason, this theme needs to be covered again and again.
• Sometimes it can get frustrating when the machines are not working. For example, the iPads seemed to have a mind of their own. Sometimes the reception was good and they worked well, but sometimes they didn't.

The technological side of things: 

• We created the website with Google Sites. This worked out fine since my students have Google accounts from our school.  Google Sites also allowed students to comment on their projects. 
• Some students used an iPad app called Tag Cloud to create word clouds for the website.
•  Some students tried using an iPad app called Morfo for creating a video with audio (this was so much fun!).
• To ensure theme-related vocabulary practice I created some Quizlet vocabularies which were a compulsory part of the course.  My students are pretty familiar with Quizlet and most of them create their own sets. How great is that!

• Environment
• Recycling
• Energy
• Animals
• Flowers and berries
• Trees
• Agriculture and food

• Our school uses online platform called Fronter where I had prepared some grammar and vocabulary tests for my students. I created a course room on Fronter (this is how they are called) with the link to our website and to all other exercises. So this was the place where all the course information and assignments were gathered.