90%芬兰学生愿意选英语为第一外语
http://internationaleducationforum.blogspot.tw/2014/05/90.html
在芬兰，不仅90%学生愿意选英语为第一外语，选择中文，日文等亚洲语言的学生也增加了，因为亚洲国家在国际经济上扮演越来越重要的角色，是经商的重要语言。
Popularity of English as foreign language grows
Print Email Details Parent Category: Finland Category: Domestic 08 May 2014
Chinese will become an important language of business, predicts high-school student Harald Takki (left). He, Tara Tanabe, Ruut Pelkonen, Enni Lindborg and Kaari Freese all study Asian languages in high school.
Chinese will become an important language of business, predicts high-school student Harald Takki (left). He, Tara Tanabe, Ruut Pelkonen, Enni Lindborg and Kaari Freese all study Asian languages in high school.
English increasingly dominates the language selections of school-aged children in Finland, with over 90 per cent of pupils today picking English as their first foreign language. The popularity of other foreign language studies, in turn, has decreased notably.
“Only three, four per cent of pupils at Finnish-language schools don't select English as their first language,”
reveals Anna-Kaisa Mustaparta, a counsellor at the National Board of Education.
While the situation is to an extent attributable to school-specific curricula, also parents influence the language selections of their children. Fluency in English is regarded as a valuable asset.
The growing dominance of English is also affecting the teaching of other foreign languages, including German and French, prompting education experts to express their concerns. “Everyone speaks English, and you therefore need other languages to differentiate,” argues Lauri Halla, the principal at the Kulosaari Secondary School in Helsinki.
Typically, children in Finland begin learning the compulsory first foreign language – the so-called A1 language – in their third year of basic education. In addition, children have over the past two decades been able to select a voluntary foreign language – A2 language – at the beginning of their fourth or fifth year of basic education.
Whereas initially as many as 40 per cent of the age bracket picked an A2 language, the share has recently declined to an estimated 25 per cent. “Additional language studies require work and may lengthen school days. Not everyone considers this an opportunity provided by the society,” Mustaparta explains.
Meanwhile, German continues to be the most popular foreign language after English among pupils of Finnish schools, although its popularity has gradually diminished. The popularity of Spanish, in contrast, has increased.
Similarly, an increasing number of pupils are drawn to more exotic world languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, which are already taught at least in the Helsinki region. Pupils at the Kulosaari Secondary School will also be able to start learning Korean at the beginning of next autumn.
“In the future, nearly everyone will come in contact with Asians in the working life,” foresees Ari Huovinen, the principal at the Ressu Upper Secondary School in Helsinki.