Finnish Pupils’ Communicative Language Use of English in Interviews in Basic Education Grades 1–6

The data consisted of pupils in basic education grades 1–6 who were in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classes and studied partly in English. The pupils (N=7) were interviewed once at the end of each spring term during their first six school years, which provided 42 audio-recorded interviews, each 5–15 minutes in length. The data was analysed through qualitative content analysis methods. The main research finding was that the pupils were able to communicate in English by using various communication strategies and language functions from grade 1 onwards. The interviewer’s role in helping pupils to cope in interviews was particularly important in grades 1–2 when, with the help of the interviewer, the pupils managed to communicate successfully. The older the pupils were, the less help that was needed, and the interviews had more and more conversational features. There were differences in using communication strategies between pupils and grades. Some of the pupils were strongly using achievement strategies and others avoiding. In the early grades, more avoiding was identified, but with the help of the interviewer, the communication was successful. The language functions were usually informative in character, but the older pupils used more argumentative features. Both the communication strategies and language functions used by the pupils were concentrated in a few common categories in grades 4–6. The interviewer used many strategies to support the pupils’ coping in English in the interviews. He was able to change his strategies according to the pupils’ needs to maximise the pupils’ communicative language use of English as the interviewer knew the pupils beforehand. The study indicated that oral practice of English over time in small group sessions with a teacher who speaks English as his native language creates a good context in which to practise the communicative language use of English with functional aims. The data also demonstrated that pupils with a multicultural background were good at communicative language use overall and that some of them were able to use several foreign languages.