This section focuses on studies that discuss Finns’ overall skills in English, either in international or national tests or in self-assessment. These studies address both pupils, students and adults. I start the discussion with studies from the 1970s and then progress towards the present.
To begin in the past, Takala (2004, 258) reports on an international study from 1971. Here, the type of school pupils attended greatly affected their performance in tests in English. At that time, many Finns still studied German as the first foreign language and only started English at a later stage. Overall, 14-year-old students’ level of English was modest but average in international comparison, while upper secondary school students had reached a good level in international comparisons (Takala 2004, 258).
Since the 1970s, similar international school-level comparisons have not been performed, but in the recent ratings of a private language school operating worldwide (EF 2015, 16), Finland was ranked in the fifth place. This result is based on scores from over 900,000 adults taking the school’s online English test in 2014. The test-takers were self-selected and mainly included students and young adults. In the ranking, Finland is among the nine countries characterised with ‘very high proficiency’, which corresponds to CEFR level B2 (EF 2015, 61; for CEFR, see Section 4.4.2). However, the school maintains that while the ability to converse in English is widespread and many people have daily exposure to English, “many students do not develop an adequate level of academic English to pursue tertiary studies in the language” (EF 2015, 12; see also Sections 2.2 and 4.3).
National studies show that students’ language skills have improved since the 1970s. Takala (2004, 265-270) believes this is partly because of greater access to English-language youth culture, increased exposure to English-language material, more emphasis on oral skills, particularly listening skills, and more versatile teaching methods. In tests given in 1991, teenagers in comprehensive school were able to do what students in the final grade of upper secondary school had been able to do in 1971. Takala (2004, 270-275) believes that the general level of Finnish pupils’ English skills at the end of comprehensive school was fairly good in the early 2000s. The range, however, was wide, and although the best students were superb, the number of low-performers was, in his opinion, alarming.
Tuokko (2000) reports on a nationwide study in Finland, collecting information on ninth- graders’ (15-year-olds’) attainment of the goals in the comprehensive school core curriculum in 1999. Tuokko (2000, 31-32) reports that on average, pupils were successful in 64% of the tasks. About 14% of the pupils scored ‘excellent’ (more than 85% in the test), while 19% had weak skills (less than 45% in the test). In the grammar section, the most difficult topics were verb forms, articles and pronouns; the students succeeded with an average of 65%. The difficulty in verb forms mainly concerned the pupils’ use of the present perfect in questions, the past perfect in statements, the conditional, the future and the passive in the past tense (Tuokko 2000, 59). In addition to school marks, the background factors which best explained success in the grammar section of the test were having an international penpal, active browsing of the Internet and reading English-language magazines (Tuokko 2000, 99). Tuokko (2007, 196-250) later created a method of indexing the skills of these ninth-graders on the CEFR scale (see Section 4.4) and argues that many of these students, about 40%, had reached level B1, and about 25% level B2.
However, some studies also report on differences within the population. In 1991, there was some geographical variation: students in southern Finland outperformed those in eastern and northern Finland. Pupils in bigger cities did a little better than those in the countryside, while the students’ gender did not make a difference (Takala 2004, 267-270). According to Takala (2004, 272), regional and inter-school differences seem to have increased since, although scores in other school subjects have been fairly homogeneous. In 1999, Tuokko (2000, 35) reports that girls scored better than boys in all areas of the test, particularly in writing. Swedish-speaking pupils had better scores (74%) than Finnish-speaking students (63%).
Fairly similar results were provided in an extensive study by Sartoneva (1998) on Finnish adults’ self-assessed language skills. In the study, 72% of adults reported that they can speak at least one foreign language, while 58% could communicate in at least two foreign languages. The most commonly spoken foreign language (66% of the adult population) was English (see also Leppänen et al. 2011). Again, there were differences in the population: women reported speaking more foreign languages than men, and young adults generally reported better language skills than older generations (Sartoneva 1998, 65-68). However, only 13% of the population (mainly highly educated young adults) had very good skills in English.
Many researchers (e.g. Leppänen and Nikula 2008; Leppänen et al. 2011; Meriläinen 2010a; 2010b; Takala 2004) argue that the role of English has become increasingly prominent in
Finland over the past few decades. The spread of the use of English in Finland has been so quick that Leppänen and Nikula (2008, 16; see also Meriläinen 2010a) argue that instead of English being a ‘foreign’ language, which it still was in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, today English is almost comparable to a ‘second’ language in Finland, as a significant number of people use English on a daily basis (Leppänen et al. 2011, 16). An extensive survey on Finns’ use of English in 2007 confirms that English plays a significant role in Finns’ lives (Leppänen et al. 2011). Again, the best skills were among highly-educated young city-dwellers, while the older generations, people in the countryside and people with less education have lower skills. Most of the participants responded that they can use English at least moderately (Leppänen et al. 2011, 95-99). According to the study, most university-educated young people in Finnish cities have fully adopted English and use it in most aspects of life (Leppänen et al. 2011, 164-167). Thus, the participants in my study (see Section 6.2) should also be quite successful at using English.
Both self-reported and test-based assessments of Finns’ skills seem to take very similar lines, with gradual improvement from the 1970s to today, and a similar tendency appears in European comparison. For example, recent Eurobarometer results show that 70% of Finns can have a conversation in English (European Commission 2012, 15). The score is higher than the European Union average, which is 38%; Finland is placed in seventh position out of 27 countries. Furthermore, 50% of Finns can listen to the news in English, 49% can read newspaper articles in English and 51% can communicate online (European Commission 2012, 31-37). Many Finns use foreign languages when travelling, watching television, on the Internet or at work, which is typical across Europe (European Commission 2012, 52), but 15% of Finns also report using foreign languages while studying something other than languages. This is a high percentage on the European scale.