From demotivation and anxiety toward motivation and positiveness in learning and using a foreign language - is this possible?

My paper discusses firstly how an obligatory course in Swedish for the Finnish-speaking medical students at the University of Turku (Finland) can offer the students an opportunity in form of "out-of-classroom language learning" to practice their oral skills in Swedish (minority language in Finland) that they will need as doctors, and secondly how it contributes to their ongoing professional development. The main concepts in this paper are therefore both lifelong learning but also so-called lifewide learning. Both concepts are here observed from the perspective of medical studies and language learning (LSP, CLIL). The data I use come from two questionnaires (N = 209) and reflections (= narratives, N = 150) on the students' experiences and thoughts about using medical Swedish in real life. Finally I will discuss the importance of this project for the students as becoming doctors and how it seems both to increase their motivation to learn Swedish and to encourage them to use it in working life.

References

Dewaele, J.-M. 2017. Psychological Dimensions and Foreign Language Anxiety. In: Loewen, S. & Sato, M. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition. London. 433-450.

MacIntyre, Peter D. & Gregersen, Tammy & Mercer, Sarah (eds.) 2016. Positive Psychology in SLA. (SLA 97.) Bristol/Buffalo/Toronto.

Sahlstein, Annmari 2017. "Varför borde jag kunna svenska?" Finska medicinstudenters uppfattningar om svenskans betydelse i Finland och speciellt i läkaryrket. I: Svenskans beskrivning 35. Göteborgs universitet. 315-328.