Aaltio Maija-Hellikki. Finnish for Foreigners 1

Seventeenth edition. — Otava, 2007. — 236 p. — ISBN13: 978-951-1-08145-6; ISBN10: 951-1-08145-4Учебник финского языка. Язык-посредник – английский.The purpose of Finnish for Foreigners 1 is, above all, to teach the learner spoken Finnish. Most topics have been selected with special regard to practical situations facing every foreigner in Finland; the basic structure and vocabulary are taught in gradual installments; and throughout there are also hints about colloquial usage in the Helsinki area. (These hints, useful to foreigners already in Finland, can easily be skipped by students learning Finnish in their own countries.) At the same time, of course, students will learn to master the fundamentals of written Finnish; structural points typical of written language alone will be introduced in Finnish for Foreigners 2.The chapters of this book are divided into three parts:
dialogue or narrative,
structural notes, and
vocabulary.Due to the spoken-language approach of this book, most lessons are based on a dialogue, which is by far the most important part of the lesson. As it contains vocabulary and phrases typical of the situation and includes useful structural patterns, memorizing as many of the dialogues as possible is strongly recommended, especially in the beginning stages. To save time and to forestall errors for those studying Finnish without a teacher, all lessons include an idiomatic English translation. The English is also a useful help in checking how well the Finnish has been memorized and in looking ahead for phrases and words eventually needed;The presentation of the structure of Finnish proceeds from the frequent and/or easier to the rare and/or more difficult. The use of grammatical terminology characteristic of Finnish alone has been reduced to a minimum. This book is not meant to be a complete grammar. It is concerned with the essentials rather than with all the details;The vocabulary section shows the inflection of the Finnish words and their English equivalents. It may also include other information, for instance examples illustrating the use of the new words. All the dialogues and other texts, as well as the pronunciation exercises following the first few lessons, are available on two cassettes which also include the listening comprehension exercises in the Exercise book for each chapter.