Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

speaking children; the idea is that these children will become functionally bilingual in
Swedish and Finnish through the immersion programme. Most research in the field of
immersion is carried out at Vaasan yliopisto/Vasa universitet (Vaasa university). 36 In 1980,
the concept of immersion was first implemented in the Finnish-language school system in
Vaasa, but the concept has spread especially to the area around the capital city Helsinki.
There are private and municipality immersion pre-school provisions around the bilingual
municipalities of Finland and more than 40 Swedish immersion day care centres in Finland,
and the demand for immersion provisions as well for the Swedish care centres is growing.
Language use in the pre-school provisions
The pre-school provisions are categorised on the basis of their language of instruction in
Swedish-language and Finnish-language institutions. The Swedish immersion pre-school
teacher usually speaks fluently both Finnish and Swedish. This is typical for the urban
bilingual areas in Finland, where Swedish-speaking families often live in a Finnish-speaking
context.
Some of the pre-school settings are bilingual with separate language groups within the
institution, according to the language background of the children. You can also find some
bilingual settings, with varying pedagogical and linguistically approaches.
There also exist day care institutions with another language than Swedish or Finnish as the
medium of instruction (for example, English, Russian).
Collaboration between pre-school practitioners and parents
If parents choose for a monolingual Swedish pre-school provision, they want their child to
attend a Swedish day care group in order to give the child a chance to a good Swedish
language competence when entering primary school. The parent participation depends on
the policy of the pre-school institution.
2.3.2 Institutions of the pre-school education
According to the law every child has her/his subjective right to day care in her/his mother
tongue. Day care must be offered to every child, if the parents so wish. Pre-school education
starts for children from between the ages of 9 months and continue until they start
compulsory primary school starts usually in August of the year when the child turns seven.
Infants under age one are rarely enrolled in care centres because Finland offers generous
parental leave support programs for parents in their child’s first year of life.
In Finland, there are different kinds of day care institutions for children who have not yet
started pre-school classes. Pre-school classes start at the age of 6 prior to primary school.
In the Swedish community in Finland the institutions prior to primary school are:
36 Buss, M. & Laurén, C. (1996) Immersion Requires a Wide Network. International connections provide new ideas for teaching. University of
Vaasa. Translation by Sari Suistala. http://www.uwasa.fi/midcom-serveattachmentguid-29d06a4b29e85da1ac2963a34c5c693d/lang.pdf
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