From canon to chaos management : blogging as a learning tool in a modern Finnish literature course

Abstract

This article is based on the teaching experiment implemented in summer 2013 in a modern Finnish literature course organised by the Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) and the University of Jyväskylä Language Centre. In order to break away from the traditional conception of literature and text, students’ independent blogging was chosen as the final course assignment instead of a traditional final project. Our aim has been to determine what blogging as an activity can add to second-language learning (i.e. learning the language in a country where it is spoken as a native language) in the context of modern Finnish literature. Our special interest is how new learning environments and approaches broaden the conception of literature held by students of Finnish as a foreign language. The 22 participants of the modern literature course were university students from different European countries. They had studied Finnish language and literature in their own countries, in other words, Finnish as a foreign language. The focus of this article is on the blogging process, which we observe from the perspective of process stages as well as student output. The article demonstrates that a teaching method that opens up new learning environments and learning modes – such as blogging – contributes to broadening students’ conception of literature and is particularly suitable for analysing phenomena in modern literature.