The Impact of the Affective Acculturative Variables on Adult Arab Learners of Finnish

Ahmed H. Naif

Abstract


Adult Arab immigrants living in Finland face a kind of difficulty acculturating into the Finnish society and difficulties in learning Finnish as acculturation into the target language society is relayed to the process of the Second Language (L2) acquisition and vice versa. The study looks at the impact of the affective acculturative variables proposed by Schumann (1978) on the acculturation process of 9 (male and female) adult Arabs taking Finnish as a Second Language (FSL) course at ‘Helsingin Aikuiopisto’ Institute of Adult Education in Helsinki. An in-depth interview was used for the purpose of data collection. Schumann’s (1978) Acculturation Model was adopted as a framework for the study. For managing and analyzing collected data, ATLAS. ti version 7 software was utilised in this study. The findings showed that during the processes of acculturation and learning FSL; the participants experienced both cultural and language shocks, integrative and instrumental types of motivation were reported, and low ego-permeability towards learning Finnish was announced; however, semi-ego permeability was reported towards the Finnish culture.

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References


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