Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Laptop Poster Session for Graduate Students

Swedish

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion

High School

This poster presentation will discuss immersion students’ L2 writing in the Finnish matriculation examination after upper secondary schooling. The main focus is on a functional model of language, the notion of register and grammatical metaphor and aspects related to the three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, textual).

Since 1987 monolingual Finnish-speaking parents have been able to choose one-way early total Swedish immersion for their children. Besides learning to read and write in a second language immersion pupils also learn the content of school subjects in L2. Advanced literacy in different areas of the curriculum across the phases of learning is important in developing knowledge and understanding.

My doctoral study is part of the project Student writing competence. The purpose of the project is to identify what texts and types of multimodal texts are produced by 11−18-year old students in 3 different classroom contexts in Finland and Sweden and to analyze different evaluation criteria for students' written L1 and L2 -texts.

The overall aim of my research is to study second language writing development among language immersion students between the ages of 12−19 in Finland. The data collection consists of L2 writers' texts in different text genres. L2 writing data were produced by language immersion students during lessons (grades 6−9) and by candidates for the Finnish matriculation examination in years 2012−2014. The approach of the study draws on the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory (e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen 2004).

In my poster presentation I will concentrate on the immersion students’ L2 -writings in the Finnish matriculation examination after upper secondary schooling. The main focus is on a functional model of language, the notion of register and grammatical metaphor and aspects related to the three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, textual) (Christie & Derewianka 2008, Christie 2012).

References

Christie, Frances (2012). Language Education Throughout the School Years: A Functional Perspective. UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Christie, Frances & Beverly Derewianka (2008). School discourse. UK: Continuum.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.(2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3^rd ed.) New York: Arnold.