Beamer's Fulbright Blog: Finnish class (click here for more...)

So I have been taking Finnish classes every Tuesday afternoon for 3 hours with my colleague Mirja Kinnunen. It makes me tired to concentrate that hard for 3 hours. Here are several pictures of our last class.


Our international class of Finnish as a Foreign Language led by Mirja Kinnunen.

Juraj (foreground) is from the Czech Republic and I guess doesn't like to have his picture taken. He is great at languages and keeps the level of performance high in class. In the background is Binh from Vietnam. She is in my Professional Development class and is an excellent student. One observation I have about Binh is that she needs more practice making silly faces (see the blog entry about 'the silliest group activity ever').

Here is Mirja. She is really patient with all of us, makes class fun and know so much about Finnish. Her way to teach us is to start small but when we don't understand something, or have a new grammar point, she'll explain the HELL out of it. It can take several hours to read a few sentences in the book with her. If a sentence has 5 grammatical cases (which is common for Finnish), she will explain all of them and have 20 charts on the board very soon. See more pictures below for an example.

Juraj and Binh being serious.

Claudia from South Africa. I know how to say 'South' in Finnish because she is an Etelä-afrikalainen. She is also a student of mine. This other class I teach 'Professional Development and Communication Skills' is sooo relaxed and informal already so it is not a problem to be a fellow student with students that I also teach.

Do you see how these extended explanations happen. It is bleached out a little, but I think I asked the difference between ihan and tosi and things were getting out of control from there.

Camera on auto-pilot. Claudia forgot her book and had to use mine.

I think this is a very nice picture of Mirja.

This is our book Hyvin Menee! There are no explanations in English because it is meant for any learner of Finnish as a foreign language from any country.

I had a lot of trouble saying this word. It means bicycle storage.

This is Leena. She is apparently the new neighbor in Chapter 5. I can't wait to find out what happens in Chapter 6!

Our class before break. It is quite a small class and so much the better for that. Also in the picture are Juhei from Japan and Ruben (closest to me) from Spain. Ruben is really good at Finnish and asks a lot of questions.

Mirja and I go to the staff coffee room during break every week. You pay 5 euros per month for all the coffee you can drink. The only problem is that there is almost never coffee ready and you have to make it yourself.

Mirja in the coffee break room.

Mirja treated me to a snack of cheese and cucumbers. The cheese was quite nice and I have big plans to buy some for myself.

The 'dirty dishes' sign on the dishwasher. Things like this can help me out. I am only learning Finnish a little at a time, but I feel like I can recognize more and more words as time goes on.