Finland Setting Bar for ESL Education

“Are you tired? When did you wake up?”

At 9 a.m. on August 29, an English class for fifth and sixth graders is going on at Niinimaki Elementary School in Elimaki, Finland. Children are still half awake and rubbing their eyes, which is not that different from the scene of the first morning class at Korean elementary schools. What’s different from Korean schools is that a Finnish teacher throws questions to students in English as if talking in his native tongue from the beginning so as to encourage children to participate in dialogues on daily routines naturally.

At the first question from the teacher, answers flowed from students’ lips easily and naturally.

As soon as the teacher in charge of the class completed the sentences, answers such as “Seven o’clock” and “Maybe at seven thirty” were heard from around the classroom.

At the English classes of Niinimaki Elementary School, what teachers and students speak in those dialogues are not sentences written in textbooks. Teachers throw questions on routine matters to students and those questions are different from day to day depending on whether it is fine or cloudy on that day, whether Thanksgiving Day is approaching, and whether it is right after the beginning of the term. Each time, students speak in English what comes to their mind.

On the day this reporter visited, Lesson 1 “Hero” was to be covered. When the teacher played a CD, which contains her recording of texts in the textbook, a student shouted out “No” in English. It was because what she played was not about Lesson 1. Looking at the teacher laughing, students also busted into laughter.

The teacher ordered children to read some texts and interpret them in Finnish. Then, he suddenly asked a student, “Have you got a hero?”

Not all questions that teachers throw are in the textbook. The student answered, “Yes, maybe I have one, but I don’t remember,” smiling sheepishly.

Elimaki, one and a half hours’ drive away from Helsinki, is a rural city with a population of about 8,500. Niinimaki Elementary School in Elimaki has only 29 students and three teachers. English classes start in the third grade and are done in a combined class of two grades. A combined class of fifth and sixth graders, 11 students in total, has two English classes per week 45 minutes each time.

Among families of languages, Finnish belongs to the Ural-Altaic language group along with Korea, Japanese, and Mongolian and therefore, is significantly different from English, an Indo-European language, in sentence structure and grammar.

An education advisor at a Finnish educational research institute proudly explained, “Finnish is totally different from English in that it has no prepositions and articles. Although leaning English is very difficult, most Finnish people are well aware of the importance of English and schools are doing a good job of teaching English. That’s why there are lots of Finnish who are fluent in English.”

In Helsinki, even taxi drivers can converse in English without difficulties. From elementary schoolers to middle-aged gentleman, almost everyone understood and answered in English when this reporter asked directions in English on streets. They learned the English skill only at school.

On September 11, this reporter visited a classroom at an elementary school in Gaepo-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Fifth graders were having an English class.

Students were intently repeating after an English tape. Jeong, a teacher in charge of the class, said, “The only sentences I speak in English during the class are the ones that I have prepared before the class,” and added, “Even among children, if students who once lived abroad or learned English in English-speaking countries ask questions in English, they are alienated.”

We cannot but ask ourselves why it is that English cannot be taught well in Korea while school education is enough to turn almost everybody into a fluent English speaker in Finland.