The language learning process and the best educational system of the world.

There is no news when we think people need motivation to learn… In case of Children, they need to be motivated, and, there is a lot of people that agree with the fact that Kids learns languages in a more easy way, right?

Today, I am here to expose to you all how the language learning process works on the country with the best educational system of the world….

First of all, this place is Finland.

And why is that? Well, according to a lot of researches, this country always appear between the first five places, and major times, in first. Well, the research of Pearson institute says that Finland give teacher a high value on society, and it is very hard to become a teacher in Finland, they need a Master or Doctor Degree and a hard process to get in.

All the points of education are important, since cooking until dancing and arts, not just math and reading, and Finnish children are very well with these things too! There is an excellent way to look for the priorities on the education of children.

You should search for more about it.

What about language learning?

First, there are a lot of possibilities of foreign language in School for children. People are Ok about to speak Swedish AND Finnish. Amazing, don’t you think? Stats shows that most common languages studied in this place are: English, German, French, Russian, and Spanish (Plus Swedish, of course). Stats shows too that: Finland are above the media of the continent for knowledge of foreign languages. 70% of people are TRIlingual, 47% can speak three foreign languages and 23% can speak more!

My experience:

When I met a Finnish girl, I saw how amazing it is. She could speak a lot of languages and study a lot of more! (plus the fact that Finnish grammar is a very hard one!) But… she acts like it is normal. When I call her a polyglot, she reacts like: What? No, it is just common. Hahaha I simply started to love this culture, and I invited my Friend Emilia, from Finland, to talk about her experience with language learning while a Finnish high school student.

Ladies and gentlemen: Emilia speaking:

Hi world! Haha. My name is Emilia, I’m 16 years old and as it was already told: I come from Finland. I’m on my first year of high school. First of all I want to thank Patrick for this opportunity and all the support you have given me. Thank you. Also to keep you guys on track I’m studying English, German, Swedish and Chinese at school and Japanese by myself. Also in few weeks I will begin my studies of Russian.

So, about language learning in Finland. To make sure that all of you reading this could understand better what I’m talking about, I’m briefly going to explain you the school system of Finland.

We start going to school when we’re 7 years old. We have a nine-year compulsory comprehensive school, which consists of elementary school (grades 1-6) and middle school (grades 7-9). After that you are able to choose from a vocational school and a high school which are not compulsory and last for about three years. After that there’s tertiary education which is divided into university and polytechnic.

My own experience is that the first foreign language I started learning was English. Most kids in Finland start learning English as their first foreign language in 3rd grade. That means I’ve been learning English for 7 years. Also when I was in elementary school it was an option in my home town that you could start learning German in 4th grade. It’s not an option anymore so my German teacher in middle school told us we’re like dinosaurs. I chose to learn German because my dad was telling me that I would need it in the future but also because I was interested in it myself. I haven’t ever regretted my decision on that.

Some of us in Finland start learning Swedish as an option in elementary school, but for most of us Swedish learning starts in 7th grade and it’s not optional. So I began learning Swedish at that time. I fell in love with the language. When I started high school I changed my level on learning Swedish from B-level to A-level, which means I’m studying it on the level as if I had started learning it in elementary school. Many other students did that too.

About a year ago I took my first course of Japanese in my home town’s adult education centre. I had studied it by myself before but I thought that taking courses of it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. At the adult education centre there’s many languages to choose from, such as Spanish, Italian, French and Estonian. In the beginning of this year I took the second course of Japanese. Unfortunately, this fall there wasn’t a fitting course for me to keep learning Japanese at the adult education centre but I will keep an eye on that in the beginning of 2016 and keep learning it by myself until then.

Back to the school again, I did not start a new language in middle school. In 8rd grade in Finland you are able to start a new language, such as German, French or Russian, depending on the town you live in. In high school you’re again able to choose from those three languages. I chose Russian and I’m really looking forward to it.

So how am I studying Chinese, if it’s not in high school or the adult education centre? Actually, I study it at my town’s “adult high school”. This year they started teaching Spanish, Chinese and Latin there. Portuguese and Italian have also been options to choose from. The classes are in the evening after my day in high school ends and I get high school courses out of it. I chose to learn Chinese because I was inspired by my friend from China and I have really fallen in love with Chinese.

I hope this gave you at least a some kind of idea about language learning in Finland even though I mostly wrote this based on my experience.

Näkemisiin!