EESTI KEELE OMANDAMIST TOETAVAD TUNNITEGEVUSED I KOOLIASTME MITMEKEELSES KLASSIS
CLASS ACTIVITIES SUPPORTING ESTONIAN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AT PRIMARY SCHOOL LEVEL

Summary/Abstract: Estonia is currently in the process of converting its education system to Estonian as the sole medium of instruction. As part of this transition, it is important to understand how Estonian as a second language and other subjects such as Mathematics, Arts, Natural Sciences, etc., are taught at primary school, which is most affected by the transition. The aim of this study is to get an overview of the instructional activities teachers use to support the learning of Estonian as a second language, as well as the scaffolding and linguistic resources used in the subject lessons. In addition, student activities are investigated. Data were collected from 34 primary school teachers who self-documented their classroom activities. The involved classes participated in a pilot project testing models for improving Estonian language teaching. In this project, Estonian is the language of instruction in at least half of the classes. The analysis revealed that teachers use a wide range of methods for teaching Estonian, but certain aspects of communicative language learning are not implemented, e.g., listening comprehension and writing are not taught as systematically as vocabulary. Students do not get enough opportunities to speak or express themselves because teachers underuse group or pair work. In subject lessons, the emphasis is on content, and language support, if any, usually consists of vocabulary learning activities. On the other hand, teachers are using some Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) techniques, such as multimodal texts, scaffolding, and activating prior knowledge. The research findings inform both teacher education and stakeholders in the transition process about the support teachers need when teaching in multilingual settings.

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