Finnish student language teachers reflecting on linguistic concepts related to sentence structures

Students recognising linguistic concepts in L1 and L2 textbooks

Abstract

In this article, we report on a two-part qualitative case study on Finnish student language teachers' views of linguistic concepts related to teaching sentence structures and their ability to recognise linguistic concepts in mother tongue and foreign language textbooks. In addition, our aim is to gain experience of collaboration between mother tongue and foreign language students. The current Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014, translated 2016) emphasises language awareness, including linguistic and cross-linguistic awareness. Language education requires L1 and L2 teachers to co-operate, and it is important for teachers to gain experience of such co-operation already during their pedagogical studies The focus of our study is on student language teachers' ability to recognise linguistic concepts in mother tongue and foreign language textbooks. The informants are mother tongue (Finnish) and foreign language students (studying English, Swedish, German, and Russian). The study found that the students were able to find syntactic and morphological concepts in particular. Overall, they understood language and defined “linguistic concepts” from a grammatical point of view; and a functional approach to learning a language stood out. In the textbooks, the students found both similarities and differences in using linguistic concepts related to sentence structures. Overall, co-operation between L1 and L2 teachers was considered important.