In today's world of migration and diaspora, linguistic and social sustainability are key factors in promoting social cohesion among linguistically diverse populations. The European Commission (EC, 2018) stresses the importance of developing multilingual pedagogies to address the diverse needs of multilingual children in schools. Finland has been a multilingual country for centuries, yet it seems that even today teachers uphold monolingual ideologies (Alisaari et al., 2019). This could lead to a situation where students are taught with a "one-size-fits-all" mentality.
The premise behind the present study is that a one-size-fits-all mentality in teaching English reading comprehension (RC) does not address multilingual students' diverse language learning needs, nor does it represent the multilingual pedagogy referred to by the EC. Indeed, the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014) emphasizes the importance of addressing students' individual learning needs and encouraging them to use different ways of learning English. However, there is little mention of how teachers should go about addressing those needs and encouraging students to find the best ways to learn English. The present study focuses on reading comprehension strategies (RCSs), because migrant students' literacy skills are especially weak compared to the country's non-migrant youth (PISA, 2018). RC and literacy in general are the building blocks for linguistic and social sustainability.
This study, therefore, offers insight into the English RCSs of 77 students aged 13–14 with a migrant background. Their heritage language (HL) literacy level varies from complete non-literacy to being able to read at a level appropriate for their age. The data were collected using a combined and modified version of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1989) and the Survey of Reading Strategies (Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002); the mean and median scores were analyzed in SPSS. The questionnaire was supplemented with interviews of nine respondents, which were analyzed with NVivo. The results revealed that more active, purposeful strategy use is needed; closer focus should be given to helping individual students understand the importance of using RCSs and encouraging them to experiment with different strategies to find those most suitable. Also, they need more skills in applying prior language knowledge in English/foreign language RC. Addressing these issues has the potential to improve migrant students' overall literacy skills.
References
Alisaari, Jenni, Leena Maria Heikkola, Nancy Commins, Emmanuel O. Acquah (2019). Monolingual ideologies confronting multilingual realities. Finnish teachers' beliefs about linguistic diversity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 80, 48–58.
European Commission (2018). Council recommendation on improving the teaching
and learning of languages (8.7.2022)
Finnish National Board of Education (2016). Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014. Finnish National Board of Education Publications 2016:5.
Mokhtari, Kouider and Ravi Sheorey (2002). Measuring ESL Students' Awareness of Learning Strategies. Journal of Developmental Education, 25(3), 2–10.
Oxford, Rebecca (1989). Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). Version 7.0 (ESL/EFL) (8.7.2022)
PISA (2018). Ensituloksia. Suomi parhaiden joukossa. Finnish National Agency for Education (8.7.2022)
