The first section of the survey focused on the students' background information by asking the participants to report on some general matters, such as age and sex, but more importantly on their linguistic history of the English language. Of the 51 participants, approximately 80% (41/51) were women, 18% (9/51) men and 2% (1/51) other. Women formed an obvious majority, and such a division seemed to be typical for the Department of Languages as well as the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Jyväskylä. For instance, according to a follow-up questionnaire by the Faculty of Humanities (2011), there were approximately 80% women and 20% men of all the graduates over the years 2006-2010. For the present study, the participants were divided into age groups according to the following ages: 18 to 23, 24 to 29 and 30 or over. The first two age groups ended up almost equal in strength, as the group of ages 18-23 included 41% (21/51) and the group of ages 24-29 47% (24/51) of the participants. University students in Finland are typically young people, and it could be expected that the age group of the age 30 or over formed the minority with 12%
(6/51) of the participants. As the study aimed at examining Finnish university students, it was no surprise that all of the 51 respondents chose Finnish as their first language. One of the students
reported to be bilingual in Finnish and English.
Next, focus was drawn to the participants' linguistic history regarding the English language. A majority of 80% (41/51) had started studying English in the third grade approximately at the age of nine, which is the most typical starting age in Finland. Almost 7% (3/51) had started their English studies on the fourth or fifth grade, whereas 14% (7/51) had started studying English even earlier than in the third grade. However, none of the participants had started studying later than on the fifth grade, which means that all of the students involved had several years of experience of studying English. The longer the students had been registered at the university, the more active they seemed to be to take part in the survey. Almost 50% (25/51) of the respondents were either fifth-year students or had studied longer than five years at the university. Figure 4 shows the exact division of the rest of participants according to how long they have studied at the university.
Figure 4. Students' years of experience of studying at the University of Jyväskylä.
Nevertheless, as the participants might have been studying other subjects besides English, they were also asked to report how many years they had studied English at the university. The options ranged
from “less than a year” to “longer than five years”. A slight majority of 11 students (22%) had studied English longer than five years, while the rest of the students divided rather evenly across the
remaining options. For instance, the answers “approximately four years” and “approximately three years” tied as the second most popular option (18%, 9/51). Figure 5 illustrates how extensively the survey reached students of English at the University of Jyväskylä. In regard to the participants' will to learn more of the English language, an impressive 75% (38/51) were “very interested” in learning
Figure 5. Students' years of experience of studying English at the University of Jyväskylä.
more. 24% (12/51) reported to be “interested” whereas 2% (1/51) reported to be only “slightly interested” in learning more of the English language. Naturally motivation is affected by numerous factors, such as significance and relevance of English studies, social and physical environment as well as timetables, but strong motivation could be expected from such advanced students of English. Indeed, university students had invested their time and effort in studying for the entrance exams and also gotten accepted into the university and thus, it could be anticipated that they were interested in learning more of the language. However, not all of the students were planning to continue their studies, which might also affect the results. Furthermore, it is only natural for students' motivation to differ from time to time, based on for instance one's specific courses and overall situation in life.
The participants' experiences of the English language within the context of English-speaking countries were considered to be relevant in terms of the students' linguistic history. Nearly 30% of the respondents, i.e. 15 of the 51 students, had spent more than three months in an English-speaking country. The most popular destination was the USA, as six of the 15 respondents had resided in the country, followed by Ireland (4 respondents) and Canada (2 respondents). Other English-speaking countries mentioned were the UK and especially Scotland and Wales, Australia and Jamaica. Thus, the target group had plenty of experience of a wide range of Inner Circle countries. The final questions of the section related to the students' usage of the English language. Firstly, where did the participants mainly use the English language and secondly, who did they mainly use English with?
Four general options were offered for places of English use: “in my free time”, “at the university”,
“at work” and “somewhere else”. The participants were able to choose more than only one option.
The university proved to be the most typical place of English usage, since 47 out of the 51 participants (92%) chose it. However, “in my free time” came as a close second with 39 respondents (76%). 16 of the students (31%) chose “at work”, whereas six respondents (12%) reported that they use English mainly “somewhere else”. These results forecasted the following answers; if the participants used English mainly at the university, it was no surprise that 82% of them (42/51) reported that they used English mainly with non-native speakers of English.
Accordingly, less than 18% (9/51) used English mainly with native speakers. Moreover, almost 50% (24/51) somewhat agreed and nearly 30% (15/51) strongly agreed that they will mainly use English with non-native speakers in the future, as well. Table 1 shows the exact distribution of the participants.
Table 1. Students' estimation of their future use of English.
Strongly I believe that in the future
I will probably use more dominated by non-native speakers not only nowadays, but also in the future. In comparison with the upper secondary school students examined by Mäkinen (2014), the Finnish university students were even more convinced of the vast use of English by non-native speakers in the future.