An Analytical Study of Factors Contributing to the Success of School English Language Education in Finland

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Finland has attracted a great deal of attention from educators all over the wor ld mainly due to her continuous excellence in the PISA, but Finland has also succeeded in fostering high-level English proficiency among her EFL learners in spite of the relatively small number of lesson hours from primary through upper secondary school, about two-thirds the number of lesson hours Japanese EFL learners receive during the same period ofschooling. In order to find out factors conducive to Finland’s success in bringing about highly competent English learners, a questionnaire study was conducted against Finnish university students and English teachers. The participants were asked to evaluate the importance of the fifteen success factors extracted from the review of the literature and the field study conducted in Finland. These fifteen success factors have been fairly well endorsed by the participants. It has also been disclosed that the teachers tended to be more positive in their evaluation than the students although there exists a high correlation between the teachers’ and the students’ responses.