A method based on decades of language research
Finnished is built on the Natural Method, following the principles of language guru Dr. Stephen Krashen and decades of research in second language acquisition.
Instead of studying grammar rules, you will learn Finnish by absorbing it, listening to it from day 1, understanding more and more – which then unlocks your speaking.
At Finnished, we use the Natural Method in all our courses. The Natural Method, as its name suggests, makes us learn a language the way our brains naturally acquire languages: through understanding messages, not through grammar rules.
Research shows that studying grammar rules does not result in fluency in a language. Conscious knowledge about language – e.g. knowing in theory when to use the passé composé – can only marginally be transferred into functional fluency and comprehension of that language (Krashen, 1982).
In other words, even if you know the Finnish grammar by heart, you will not be able to understand or speak it fluently.
Instead, our brains acquire language the same way they always have – by making sense of messages we hear or read, absorbing patterns and structure without ever consciously studying them.
Learn Finnish in a way that works for your brain: by immersion. It’s the same way you learned your native language. That ability hasn’t gone anywhere! Don't waste time learning theory, but the actual language.
Finns don’t use the formal Finnish – kirjakieli – in everyday life, but it’s the form that is most often taught in textbooks and classes. By learning real-life spoken Finnish, puhekieli, you’ll be able to communicate like a real Finn in any situation.
This way of learning makes you say things correctly because “it sounds right”, not because you remember a rule. You no longer need to feel awkward searching for the right case – you’ll understand and speak Finnish naturally and comfortably.
The Natural Method consists of two components: comprehensible input and speaking activation. Comprehensible input is the foundation and should be your main focus throughout your Finnish journey.
In the next sections, we’ll look at what each of these concepts entail and how they will help you first understand and eventually speak Finnish.
Input refers to any material that you read or listen to in Finnish with the aim of understanding its message. But just listening to Finnish TV shows isn’t going to make you fluent; it needs to be comprehensible.
Comprehensible input is input that is made understandable with things like gestures, images, subtitles or context. We don’t have to understand every single word, but just enough to figure out the rest through context.
Consuming comprehensible input leads to language acquisition. Language acquisition means the subconscious process of absorbing a language – the same way children learn their native language. And while children’s brains are more “flexible” and can thus acquire a language somewhat more easily, this ability doesn’t suddenly disappear when we grow up: our brains still use the exact same mechanism to acquire language via comprehensible input.
Language learning, on the other hand, is what we’ve all done at school. It’s the conscious studying of rules of language and often includes translating, explaining grammar rules and memorising vocabulary.
So what happens when you start acquiring Finnish?
Acquiring a language feels very different from studying it through grammar rules and vocabulary lists. Instead of memorising kitchen vocabulary or the present tense conjugation of the verb ‘to be’, you focus on understanding the main messages in the material you’re listening to.
Through understanding, your brain starts to connect words with all of their different meanings and use cases. At the same time, it starts to recognise patterns in the language and ultimately develops an intuitive understanding of how the language is structured.
And those processes are what constitute true language acquisition and completely replace vocabulary or grammar memorisation.
The concept of comprehensible input was first proposed by Dr. Stephen Krashen in the 1980s (Krashen, 1982).
According to Krashen, “grammar, vocabulary, spelling, phonemic awareness, phonics, and knowledge of text structure can be acquired and improved without explicit instruction or skill-building of any kind” and “the source of competence in these areas is aural and written comprehensible input” (Krashen, 2011).
Several studies have since confirmed the effectiveness of the comprehensible input method in language acquisition. For example, Nakanishi (2015) found that students who read extensively in their new language progressed more in reading comprehension and vocabulary than students who didn't read.
Mason, Smith & Krashen (2020) noticed the same pattern in listening: students acquired vocabulary through listening to stories in their new language, with the gains still measurable weeks later. Lee (2005) found that the more students read, the better they could write in their new language.
The second component of the Natural Method is speaking activation. Understanding and speaking are two different skills. They use different processes in your brain and therefore need different kinds of training.
But in order to speak, you must first understand enough. You physically can’t speak if you don’t yet know enough words or how to put them together.
This is why speaking is not a very useful activity for complete beginners. Instead of actually speaking, you waste a lot of time searching for the right words and thinking about the correct sentence structure – and still most likely say things incorrectly. Normal conversation is impossible, because you can’t understand much of what your interlocutor is saying.
As a beginner, it’s much more efficient to focus on comprehensible input: building your vocabulary, acquiring grammar and developing your comprehension.
Once you understand enough, you can start activating the Finnish you already know. The suitable level of understanding before speaking activation depends on the student: some want to start speaking as soon as possible, others prefer to wait until they can understand all native material they hear.
At a minimum, you should understand slowly spoken Finnish about everyday topics. By then, you will be able to recognise words, not only when in context, but also when hearing them by themselves. That is a prerequisite for being able to say those words out loud yourself.
At first, the sentences you make will not correspond the level of your understanding. You might be completely capable of following a native-level conversation but stumble with your words when trying to say something. This is normal: you are still practising the skill of speaking, and your brain needs to form the neural pathways that make speaking automatic.
However, because you already understand so well, it will not take you a huge amount of time to start saying natural flowing sentences. Once you get over that initial “wall of speaking”, which usually is due to our lack of self-confidence rather than language skills, you will start to speak at a more advanced level than A1.
In order to speak and write correctly, one must know grammar. So how do you learn grammar with the Natural Method and comprehensible input?
An important thing to understand is that acquiring grammar through comprehensible input and learning grammar rules by heart are two different concepts.
Learning a language through the latter, grammar rule memorisation, results from the misconception of what grammar rules actually are. Language existed way before grammar rules were invented. In fact, grammar rules are just a kind of a “representation” of how grammar works, linguists’ attempt to explain patterns they observe in the language – not what our brains absorb when we acquire grammar.
And research shows that studying grammar rules does very little to our ability to understand or speak a language fluently.
Grammar acquisition, on the other hand, works through subconscious recognition of patterns. When you listen to or read comprehensible input, you will see grammar in action in the context of the material.
You don’t have to – and should not – try to figure out the rules on your own. You develop an intuitive feeling for how the grammar really works in a real context: how to build sentences and conjugate verbs, which cases to use and how the words change with different cases.
This is what leads to the feeling that something just “sounds right”, which is often what native speakers will tell you if you ask them about a specific grammar rule. You no longer need to consciously translate, search for a grammar rule or think about sentence structure – all of this happens automatically.
The traditional language learning method teaches a language through grammar rules, vocabulary lists and “fill in the gaps” type of exercises. These are standard activities for most language classes – we were all taught to learn languages this way.
Yet, even after years of second language learning, students can’t hold a conversation in that language. And rather than questioning the efficiency of the learning method, many deem themselves as “bad at languages”.
One of the reasons why schools still use this method – despite the terrible success rates – is the requirement to grade students. It is very easy and quick to grade exercises like “fill in the blank” or “translate these words” that only have one right answer, but that have nothing to do with real language acquisition.
The traditional method treats language learning like an academic subject, because ultimately, the objective of a school is to have their students pass exams, not to help them gain real-life language proficiency.
Scientific research has on several occasions shown how the natural method outperforms the traditional method. For example, Rodrigo, Krashen & Gribbons (2014) found that students learning through comprehensible input – reading and discussion, with no grammar instruction – outperformed traditionally-taught students on both vocabulary and grammar tests.
Mason (2018) found that students who did only one comprehensible input class per week and reading at home matched or outperformed in a test – on reading comprehension, writing, grammar accuracy and vocabulary – students who, in addition to that comprehensible input class and reading, had 6 other classes per week studying a textbook.
While there have been studies claiming that the traditional method is more effective than comprehensible input – most notably Norris and Ortega's (2000) meta-analysis and Spada and Tomita's (2010) follow-up – we must take a critical look at the strength of that evidence.
Firstly, in those meta-analyses, many of the individual studies pooled together had small sample sizes. This means that each individual study only had modest evidence on their own to claim real learning gains. Because those individual studies used different methodologies, analyses and test groups, makes broad conclusions harder to draw with confidence.
Secondly, many studies only lasted for a very limited time. In Norris and Ortega’s meta-analysis, a study only needed to involve more than seven hours of total teaching to count as ‘long’ instruction. Measuring progress in a language after only a few hours of studying is pointless, as it says more about short-term memorisation than it does about real, lasting proficiency.
Finally, the tests used to measure language progress mostly checked whether students could correctly apply a grammar rule on a written test, not whether they could actually understand or produce the language in real communication.
In other words, the tests measured the skills that the grammar-taught students were specifically practising – it is no surprise that those students performed better in the test.
Research in second language acquisition continues but based on current findings – and many Finnish learners’ own experiences – it is safe to say that the Natural Method has shown its effectiveness in real-life communication.
All Finnished courses use the Natural Method, each focusing on a specific phase in the natural progression in language learning – the way our brains first acquire and then activate a new language in real life.
Traditional language courses often focus on all the four skills at once – listening, reading, speaking and writing. This is why we see courses that are A1 Finnish, A2 Finnish and so on.
The weakness of this approach is that it isn’t how our brains naturally progress with languages. This is why the Finnished courses are structured differently: first focusing on understanding, then speaking.
Finnish Me is designed for beginner and intermediate level learners, who don’t yet understand – or speak – real-life Finnish.
Finnish Me starts at the very beginning of language acquisition, first building a solid foundation of comprehension.
At the start of the course, students learn the method for studying the course material. Then, they systematically go through the course material until they understand it comfortably.
By then, they will have:
unlocked the most common vocabulary
got used to Finnish pronunciation
absorbed sentence structure
picked up grammar through understanding, not rules
The next step is to apply the Finnish Me method to other native content, such as Finnish movies, series or podcasts.
If those still feel too challenging, Follow Finnish Conversations – a bundle of three improvised multi-speaker conversations – helps to bridge that gap.
By following this approach, students’ understanding builds up from slow to faster Finnish, all the way to group conversations and ultimately to understanding any Finnish speaker and native media.
In CEFR terms: Finnish Me brings students all the way through A1, A2, B1 and B2 in listening and reading comprehension categories.
Finnish Me: Speak focuses on the second part the of the Natural Method: speaking activation.
Once a student understands at least slowly spoken Finnish, they can start their speaking practice.
However, some students prefer to wait until they understand fast spoken Finnish – which is what one might hear in real-life situations.
There is no one correct level for speaking activation, as it depends on the student’s preferences. The minimum requirement is to be able to understand simple sentences about everyday topics, which the student can then practise to build themselves.
In Finnish Me: Speak, students follow the course roadmap that is designed to take them from single word answers and simple interactions to complete, more complex sentences until they can speak fluently and comfortably.
By the end of the course, they will have:
climbed over the “wall of speaking” – the moment when they understand Finnish but freeze when they need to speak
activated the vocabulary and structures they already understand
practised handling real-life situations
learned to express opinions
practised deeper discussions
In CEFR terms: Finnish Me: Speak brings students all the way through A1, A2, B1 and B2 in the speaking category.
It can also lead to an advanced level in the conversational writing category (if the typing function is used), but it’s not designed to help with writing articles, exams or official letters in Finnish.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition.
Krashen, S. (2011). Seeking a justification for skill-building. KOTESOL Proceedings, 2011, 13-20.
Lee, S. Y. (2005). Facilitating and inhibiting factors in English as a foreign language writing performance: A model testing with structural equation modeling. Language Learning, 55(2), 335–374.
Mason, B. (2018). A pure comprehension approach: More effective and efficient than eclectic second language teaching? The IBU Journal of Educational Research and Practice.
Mason, B., Smith, K., & Krashen, S. (2020). Story-listening in Indonesia: A replication study. Journal of English Language Teaching, 62(1), 3–6.
Nakanishi, T. (2015). A meta-analysis of extensive reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 49(1), 6–37.
Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning, 50(3), 417–528.
Rodrigo, V., Krashen, S., & Gribbons, B. (2004). The effectiveness of two comprehensible-input approaches to foreign language instruction at the intermediate level. System, 32(1), 53–60.
Spada, N., & Tomita, Y. (2010). Interactions between type of instruction and type of language feature: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 60(2), 263–308.