Teaching English at university

As is the case with upper secondary level education, the aim for university level education is to answer the needs of the students and society by preparing teachers for

teaching and assessing oral proficiency but also to enhance their own level of oral competence. However, after familiarizing myself with some of the Finnish universities English departments’ curricula, I noticed that there are differences between the number of courses provided for oral proficiency practice. Moreover, quite little oral proficiency teaching is provided compared to other courses. Oral skills are surely practiced to some extent on a daily basis in other courses but it is not self-evident that the speaking rules of English come naturally to everybody and would not, therefore, need more formal instruction. In fact, Lintunen (2004, 215, 220) observed that most students who were at the beginning of their English studies at the university, continued to have difficulties with their English pronunciation, even though during the primary and secondary education they had been among the top pupils. According to the findings approximately two thirds consistently mispronounced one phoneme each time it occurred in the test and one third mispronounced at least two phonemes at every occurrence. This was interpreted as most students having severe gaps in their skills and knowledge of the English phonological system leading the researchers to think that pronunciation was not emphasized sufficiently at school. Moreover, it was argued that the CEFR goal, in which it is implied that mispronunciation should not occur after upper secondary school, is unrealistic (Lintunen 2004, 215-216). Lintunen (ibid, 216) argues that by the time of reaching the level which is required of university students of English, each learner should be aware of the phonemes of the target language and it seems that the students had not been offered enough explicit pronunciation teaching. Lintunen (ibid, 219) reports that similar findings have been made before and according to him it was interesting that there has not been that much improvement. However, Lintunen (ibid, 220) also wants to point out that several aspects were also correct in the students’

performances and some were able to speak English very fluently and accurately.

In order to get a glimpse as to what extent oral skills are taught at Finnish universities I chose to view the curricula and course descriptions of the English departments of both the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Tampere. The syllabi are obviously very broad and include multiple different courses but I chose the ones that have to do with oral skills or oral competence specifically. In the syllabus for the English department of the University of Jyväskylä for the years 2009-2012 (Englannin kieli opetussuunnitelma 2009-2012), it was stated that at the master’s level and after the advanced studies the students are expected to have acquired both oral and writing skills required in specialist duties and that they are able to use English correctly and

appropriately in various contexts that can differ quite greatly from one another. I find these descriptions to be quite generally applicable and I did not find any detailed description that would have to do with speaking skills specifically. Moreover, in the section for subject knowledge there were no specific requirements for oral skills. Only two courses were provided throughout the curriculum that had to do with the practicing of oral skills specifically: ‘Phonetics’ and ‘Pronunciation’. Oral communication courses, on the other hand, were provided in both subject and advanced studies (one each) and an optional ‘Conversation and interpersonal communication’ course was offered in the subject studies. However, both ‘Phonetics’ and ‘Pronunciation’ courses are only worth one study point (ECTS) and both oral communication courses are worth two study points each. Moreover, from personal experience I can say that the oral communication courses, as can be deduced from the name, have to do with communication rather than oral language skills. In that sense, thus, the only courses that practice oral skills are principally the first two ones, both of which are quite narrow in their scope as far as the credits go.

In the syllabus for the English department of the University of Tampere (English Philology Curriculum 2009-2012) I did not find any requirements for oral skills either but I did find out that they had more courses that had to do with oral skills instruction.

At the basic level a course worth of three study points called ‘Phonetics and Pronunciation’ was offered and the students were required a minimum grade of three in order to receive a collective grade three of their basic studies. The ‘Pronunciation’

course at the University of Jyväskylä was only graded pass/fail and no further requirements were provided. However, the ‘pass’ grade equals three or higher. At the intermediate level at the University of Tampere there was a ‘Pronunciation and Intonation’ course worth two study points. I am not going to deal with the course descriptions in more detail, since I do not feel that it is beneficial for the present study but it should be pointed out explicitly that both courses presented here are most definitely skills courses instead of communicative ones. On the other hand, an advanced level optional course called ‘Working with the spoken language’ is the only one offered in oral communication. However, there is one more course, which practices communicative skills and that is the ‘Experience in an English-speaking country’ course during which students are required to spend the minimum of four weeks in an English-speaking country. This was not required from students at the English department at the University of Jyväskylä but it is strongly recommended nonetheless. Since Huhta (1993,

129) declares that idiomatic features, which of course include other aspects than speaking as well, can largely be acquired only by familiarizing oneself with the target language and culture for an extended period of time, I do not find this a bad option for oral communication practice. This view is also supported by Harjanne who cites a study by Sheen (1994, cited in Harjanne 2008, 126), which showed that it was practically impossible to achieve high-quality grammatical and sociolinguistic competence even with the help of thousands of language lessons.

In relation to this issue, Nikula (2008, 66) reports that a general concern in the discussion about the teaching of English in Finland is the quality of the language used in the classroom due to the second or foreign language speaker status of both the teacher and the students. This discussion traces back to the time when native speakers were considered the proper point of comparison in language teaching and moreover, when language learning was regarded merely model-based learning, in which the teacher’s example was the focal point. Luckily this is no longer the case, even though the debate concerning native and non-native teachers goes on. Carter and Nunan (2001, 4) provide a few points concerning this issue by asking whether a native speaker’s understanding of the culture of the target language is better than that of a non-native teacher, or whether a non-native speaker has a better understanding of the learners’ mother tongue, which possibly aids him or her in passing the information onwards in a more efficient manner. One view that supports the non-native speaker status of teachers is that a good learner can have a better command of a given language than a native speaker does, especially in the areas of reading and writing. This is due to the fact that native speakers are not a homogenous group but rather some have a very high proficiency in their mother tongue, whereas some can have a rather poor proficiency, which is especially the case in writing. (Huhta 1993, 128.) Moreover, it is also the case that some might find authentic materials too difficult (Peacock 1997, 144) meaning that listening to a teacher who is a native speaker or speaks in a native-like manner could be too difficult for those students who have poorer skills in English. However, language teaching is expected to prepare students for real-life communication, which includes communication with native speakers and I find that it is the teacher’s job to make authentic materials, including his or her own speech, comprehensible for those who are not as proficient. Hammerly (1991, 48), who mostly deals with bilingual settings of SL learning, states that an ideal situation would be that SL teachers were either native or

native-like speakers, readers and writers of both languages in addition to knowing what and how to teach.

At this point it is also beneficial to consider the matter of supplementary education and in order for teachers to keep up their oral proficiency teaching and assessment skills as well as their own oral competence, it is important that supplementary education is provided after graduation (Lukiokoulutuksen suullisen kielitaidon arviointiryhmän muistio [LSKAM] 2006, 28). Paananen-Porkka (2007, 355), for example, suggests that in order to be able to analyze and correct their pupils’ errors in pronunciation, language teachers themselves should be offered further training in phonetics. Harjanne (2008, 112) also reports that the more experienced teachers especially seem to rely on their old principles and beliefs concerning teaching but at the same time become more unaware of doing so. This statement is also supported by Mäkelä (2005, 160) whose study showed that those teachers, who had completed their pedagogical studies more recently had more modern views of language learning and teaching, than those who had been working for more than 11 years, for example. This tendency can be partly avoided with the help of supplementary education, which should, as is suggested by the Ministry of Education, form a consistent continuum with the basic level university education (LSKAM 2006, 28).

In this chapter I have discussed the status of English and English oral competence in Finland and more specifically in the Finnish educational system. Before that I discussed the aspect of oral competence in more detail and pointed out its role in general language competence. In the next chapters I will present the findings that I made in regard to all these issues.