Untitled

saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
descendants of 16th century and later arrived Orthodox missionaries and of merchants, soldiers and peasants,
White emigrants, deserters and fugitives. The oral speech norms of several generations are in contact, experiencing
attrition and displaying contact phenomena. Russians in Finland are concomitantly considered by the
host population as enemies and friends, as belonging or strangers, easily understood or incomprehensible, cultured
or uncivilized. The language of the majority in their country of origin is the minority language in
Finland. The old Russians, Finnish-Russian bilingual children, newcomers who speak good Russian but drop
the stylistic nuances, all of them mix semantically close words or misplace the accents in the Russian geographical
names, including Finnish lexis into Russian speech and misinterpreting meanings of words. It has
been described how the changes in the native language appear first as slips of the tongue and deepen with immersion
in the Finnish environment. The absence of regular education in Russian and meaningful contacts
with the language may lead to erosion, but some people who did not acquire their home language in childhood
may have chances to learn it later. The Russian speakers are to a certain extent prevented from assimilation
because of the economic benefits of bilingualism. They maintain interest in current events in Russia and identify
themselves with Russians and Russian culture. They are afraid of the future rootlessness in the Finnish
culture (Protassova 2004).
A brief history of the Russian educational institutions in Finland looks as follows:
The end of the 19th century: numerous primary schools and dozens of secondary schools for the Russianspeaking
population in Finland, some operated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Most of the Russian schools
were located in Helsingfors (Helsinki) and Vyborg (Viipuri).
By the 1920s and 1930s: all the Russian schools were facing great financial problems, and only the
Tabunov Primary School and the Russian Secondary School in Helsinki managed to survive until the end of
World War II.
1955: A new Russian-Finnish private school opened in Helsinki. It offered a day care centre and both a
primary and secondary school. In connection with the comprehensive school reform of 1977, it became a public
school supported by the government and called the Finnish-Russian School. Finnish-speaking pupils studied
Russian as a foreign language, starting with preparatory classes, and children who speak Russian as their
first language have access to dual instruction provided by native speakers for all subjects in both languages.
English as a second foreign language was introduced in the second grade and Swedish in the seventh grade.
1992: The Myllypuro primary school in Helsinki teaches Russian speakers in grades 1 to 6.
1997: The Finnish-Russian network school of Eastern Finland in Joensuu, Lappeenranta and Imatra provides
education to a few hundred children. The main language of instruction is Finnish. The school is organized
mostly in the form of bilingual classrooms, and occasionally as separate classes in either tongue, taught
by native speakers of both languages.
From 1988 on: about 20 Russian-speaking kindergartens opened all over Finland.
In the future: there are some plans to organize multilingual educational institutions to meet the needs of
bilingual parents and Russian-speaking entrepreneurs and businessmen from Finnish and Russian origin (Protassova
2008).
Investigating the specificity of the Russian language and culture teaching in Finland, one must mention
the long common border, the ambiguous relationships in the past and modernity, the rich sources of shared
history and mutual needs of the neighbouring countries. Objectively, the requirement to have those who could
speak Russian is mounting, and it can be demonstrated by personal and political documents (Rinne 2010).
Thus, the Finnish population does not attain the numbers of those who speak Russian sufficiently well due to
different prejudices and misunderstandings. Despite of this, the immigrants abandon their native tongue very
fast, and the next generation is not as proficient as the former has been. The maintenance of the heritage language,
Russian, along with the acquisition of the second one, Finnish or Swedish, contributes to a new speaker
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