» Finnish course outlines

The Cactus Course Outlines provide a learning framework for the Cactus Foreign Language Evening Courses. They are designed to provide you with a good idea of what you might cover during the course and include typical themes, vocabulary fields, grammar, cultural content and skills work for the language and the level. The Outlines are flexible rather than prescriptive, in that our teachers always plan their lessons with the specific abilities, aims and interests of the students in their classes in mind.

• Finnish Beginner 1
• Finnish Beginner 2
• Finnish Beginner 3
• Finnish Elementary 1
• Finnish Elementary 2
• Finnish Elementary 3
• Finnish Intermediate 1

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Introducing yourself: greetings - saying "Hello", "Goodbye" and "How are you?"
• Apologies
• Numbers and colours
• Enquiring about accommodation in person and over the phone
• Asking about facilities when booking accommodation
• Filling in forms
• Spelling names
• Asking for addresses and giving directions
• Giving instructions
• Getting around a new place
• Asking what something means
• Ordering drinks and snacks at a bar or café, eating out, ordering meals at a restaurant, asking for the bill

Grammar:

• The Finnish alphabet
• Introducing the main characteristics of Finnish
• The plural suffix
• Vowel harmony
• Question forms
• Asking questions
• Verbless sentences ("be")
• Personal and demonstrative pronouns
• Personal endings in the present tense
• The main case suffixes: locative, dative, ablative and accusative
• Consonant changes
• Verb stems, the infinitive and the imperative
• The negative suffix
• "There is..." / "There is not..." / "Is there...?"

Cultural content:

• The language family that Finnish belongs to
• The relationship between Finnish, Sami, Estonian, Hungarian, Finnish and other languages
• Titles - Mr, Mrs; addressing others in appropriate ways
• Greetings
• Finnish food and drink
• Reading signs

Skills Work:

• Speaking - using classroom conversation regularly
• Simple chats about the weather
• Listening activities
• Writing practice - inc. describing pictures, finding differences between pictures, etc.
• Basic rules of pronunciation

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Talking about the weather
• Comparing months and seasons
• Talking about likes and dislikes
• Talking about yourself
• Asking other people about themselves
• Talking about country, nationality and language
• Talking about professions
• Shopping for presents and clothes
• Asking prices, sizes and colour
• Talking about things that are happening in present time
• How to talk about daily routines
• Making plans
• Introduction to telling the time (o'clock, half past)
• Booking tickets for the cinema

Grammar:

• Direct and indirect object pronouns
• Comparisons
• Making adjectives
• Making profession names
• The negative suffix
• The present tense in verbless sentences
• Introduction to possessive pronouns
• The negative form of verbless sentences
• Asking questions in verbless sentences
• Word order
• Making country, nationality and language names using suffixes
• "Let's..." and "Shall we...?" forms
• Present continuous tense in positive, negative and question forms
• Locative, essive, perlative and other cases

Cultural content:

• Special days and public holidays
• Shopping culture in Finland
• Presents to buy from Finland
• Public transport in Finland
• Employment in Finland

Skills Work:

• Picture dictation
• Shopping themed role plays
• Writing a profile for a website
• Filling in online reservation forms
• Pronunciation

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Talking about the past
• Writing postcards
• Having a social chat
• Talking about good and bad experiences
• Using telling-the-time skills talking about the past
• Use of ever / never in the past tense
• Explaining reasons using "because"
• Time words in the past tense
• Saying what you have got
• Talking about professions
• Introducing one's family
• Talking about what you have
• Building simple compound nouns

Grammar:

• Past tense in positive, negative and interrogative forms
• Formation of the past tense
• Vowel harmony in the past tense
• Past tense in "be" phrases
• Learning some daily conversation phrases that are used in the past tense
• More possessives, possessive pronouns
• Possessor and possessed suffix
• Noun phrases
• The use of "for"
• Verb agreement

Cultural content:

• The foundation of modern Finland
• Holiday places in Finland
• Saunas
• Cooking Finnish food and making Finnish coffee
• Family relations and relatives in Finnish culture

Skills Work:

• Speaking - Using games (e.g. Guess who? Crosswords etc.)
• Writing practice - e.g. writing about past holidays, writing postcards
• Giving presentations and asking questions
• Taking notes when listening
• Pronunciation

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Talking about the present and future
• Diaries, talking about regular occurrences and habits, describing unchanging facts
• Making suggestions, informal suggestions
• "With / by" preposition (the instrumental) in both word and suffix forms
• Prepositions of place "on", "under", "inside", etc.
• More about telling the time (minutes past etc.)
• Saying where things are in relation to each other
• Describing one's home
• Asking for help
• Expressing requests and making offers
• Stating intentions and willingness
• Telling stories and jokes
• Talking about hope or possibility
• "I wonder"

Grammar:

• Revising the previous level's grammar
• The future tense in all forms
• Future tense of verbless "to be"
• Time words for future tense
• The pronunciation of the future tense
• The present tense in all forms
• The present tense of verbless "to be"
• Time words for present tense

Cultural content:

• Joking
• Socio-cultural life in Finland
• Finns, Swedes and Sami

Skills Work:

• Telling a joke in Finnish from one's own country
• Listening to dialogues and songs
• Reading simplified essays
• Discussion in pairs and groups
• Pronunciation

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Describing people and objects and the actions they are doing
• Object and verb agreement
• Common exclamations
• Expressing possibility
• Giving advice, making suggestions, and proposing solutions to problems
• Offering to do something
• Comparing things
• Talking about abilities and skills
• Stating uncertainty
• Expressing requests
• Making plans
• Describing objects in regards to their place
• Expressing one's opinion and asking for clarifications
• More about nationalities and languages
• Talking about likes and dislikes
• Expressing obligations

Grammar:

• Revising the previous level's grammar
• Relative clause
• Gerunds, Verbal Nouns
• Expressing "as" and "like" - talking about similarity
• Verb agreement
• Can / can't
• Might / might not
• More cases
• Should, must, have to

Cultural content:

• Use of set phrases in Finnish
• Immigrants and ethnic groups living in Finland
• Socio-cultural life in different parts of Finland
• Leisure activities in different regions
• Climate in Finland

Skills Work:

• Lots of speaking - situational exercises
• Reading ads for booking holidays
• Listening activities - including film fragments and dialects from different regions
• Writing a short statement describing one's skills and abilities

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Giving advice, saying what will happen if something else happens
• Talking about how you feel
• Describing an illness to a doctor or pharmacist
• Shopping at a pharmacy
• Expressing needs
• Saying how long something has been going on
• Parts of the body
• Lifestyle supplements of Finnish newspapers
• Complaining about places
• Reporting what has happened : tense and aspect
• Gossiping
• Talking about options using "both", "either", "neither"

Grammar:

• "If" forms
• Using the simple present tense in conditional sentences
• Expressing need
• "Since", "for", "until"
• Reported speech
• "Both", "either", "neither"
• Literary language forms
• Building time phrases using "before", "after" and "when"

Cultural content:

• Loan words from other cultures
• Finnish journalism and online media
• Festivals in Helsinki - Researching "What to do this summer in Helsinki"
• Politic life in Finland and the process of becoming a member of the EU

Skills Work:

• Listening to extracts from news and reading newspapers
• Telling what has happened
• Writing a comment on a newspaper article
• Listening activities -listening to a speech on the radio about current relations

Topics & Vocabulary:

• Revision of previous subjects
• Describing the time of actions in relation to other events
• Making official announcements
• Making sentences using relative clauses
• Describing objects
• Making adjectives stronger
• Giving and understanding recipes
• Talking about "what was happening?"
• Talking about changes in your life "When I was..."
• Giving instructions
• Talking about films recently seen
• Expressing opinions about hot topics in the media
• Talking about the sense of humour of different cultures

Grammar:

• Choice of grammar topics primarily according to students' needs
• Forming time words from nouns and verbs
• Relative clauses (participles)
• Adjectives reinforcement

Cultural content:

• Finnish cinema
• Finnish cuisine
• Traditions and modern way of life in Finland
• Introducing literature works from famous Finnish authors
• The Finnish sense of humour

Skills Work:

• Reading caricatures, literature pieces and articles from popular blogs and columnists
• Speaking activities
• Writing practice - e.g. film and book reviews and comments
• Listening activities - e.g. radio, TV and films
• Advanced pronunciation