Kielibuusti project

Newsletter 04/2024

The Kielibuusti newsletters – each one tailored to a different target group – feature selected details of past and upcoming events, publications and other things that connect with Kielibuusti's core themes. The newsletter is sent out four times a year.

Greetings from Kielibuusti!

(you can read this newsletter in Finnish or Swedish by changing the language at the top of the page)

We are now well into the spring semester – and this final year of the Kielibuusti project. It is therefore time for the first newsletter of 2024. In the usual way, our three newsletters tailored for Kielibuusti’s different target groups and networks offer a taste of what’s been happening and what is coming up.

Recent news from Kielibuusti: 

Kielibuusti has organised a wide range of events for different target groups. A webinar aimed at people working in higher education institutions on 13 March featured Examples of actions taken by higher education institutions to promote the language skills of international students and improve their employability. Jyrki Rajala (Centria) presented the training model for international experts created in the Export Expert project, and Anna-Riikka Rasa (Metropolia) talked about the functionally bilingual nursing education of the Tokasa project. Inkeri Lehtimaja (Aalto University) gave a presentation on the measures promoting language learning among international students at the university. There were more than 140 registrations for the event, and some of the participants also shared their own thoughts and experiences on the theme in small group discussions.

On 5 March Kielibuusti organised a webinar for teachers with the title Exciting AI – Experiences of using AI tools in language teaching. More than 50 people interested in artificial intelligence user experiences were present. Réka Aarnos, Camilla Kåla, Emmi Pollari and Tiina Nahkola shared teachers’ experiences at the event. In addition, Kamilla Yamileva talked about her own experiences as a Finnish language learner. At the end of the event, participants shared tips and discussed the possibilities and problems of artificial intelligence.

A meeting was arranged on 9 April at the University of Helsinki especially for those teaching Finnish language courses to staff members of higher education institutions. 28 participants from 9 different universities had registered for the event. Kielibuusti organised a similar nationwide event in 2023, and the interesting discussions held prompted the idea to continue similar events. This time topics involved cooperation in organizing Finnish language training for university staff and especially the need for organising online joint courses for advanced learners after the end of the Kielibuusti project. 

Actors in the higher education sector were asked to respond to the Kielibuusti impact survey, which aimed to find out how Kielibuusti has reached higher education institutions and to what extent people working at HEIs have participated in various events and utilised the kielibuusti.fi website. At the same time, the survey also mapped the wishes and needs of higher education institutions for the future developments. You can read about the results of the report in the Kielibuusti blog post (link here) (available in Finnish). A warm thank you to everyone who responded!

The labour market shortage and international experts as one solution to it, is a hot topic also in the media. Kielibuusti participates in the discussion in different arenas and highlights the importance of language learning as part of the issue. During the spring, Kielibuusti has organised two webinars for international experts on the importance of language skills in Finnish working life (27 February and 10 April). The events have provided information on kielibuusti.fi's possibilities to support the language learning. Kielibuusti also participated a TE live broadcast "Working in Finland – why and how to learn Finnish?" organized by TE Services, which can be viewed online.

In addition to international experts, Kielibuusti also aims to reach employers and change the attitudes. For example, the press release The solution to the shortage of experts lies in the Finnish language - this is how employers can support language learners (available in Finnish) clearly pointed out that language learning is an essential part of retaining international talents. Inkeri Lehtimaja from Kielibuusti was interviewed at Huomenta Suomi about whether English should be made an official language alongside Finnish and Swedish. You can watch the interview via the link (available in Finnish).

Kielibuusti participated on 14 March in the event "Succeed in recruiting international students" organized by Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce. According to the feedback, the event was as rewarding for the participants as it was for the organisers, and there is clearly a need for such discussion and encounters in the future as well. The event had 40 participants and 34 organisers.

The close cooperation between Aalto University's Kielibuusti team and the City of Espoo has continued actively. Kielibuusti has participated in various events and webinars with stands, pitches and lectures, thus reaching a large number of international experts and companies. For example, approximately 700 jobseekers and 40 companies participated in the Espoo Talent Match event on 20 March, and the Hello Espoo event on 7 March featured about 50 associations and public organisations providing services to Espoo residents, as well as about 450 new international residents of Espoo as an audience. Kielibuusti is also participating in a pilot for language-aware recruitment as a joint project with the City of Espoo, Omnia and OP Uusimaa.

Coming up next in Kielibuusti: 

During the late spring, there will be two more events, one for Finnish teachers and the other one for people training health care professionals in HEIs:

The training day Finnish in Nursing 2 will be held at Laurea's Tikkurila campus on 18 April. The target group of the training consists of actors training international nurses all over Finland, Finnish language teachers, nursing teachers, and employer representatives. The training day will include workshop activities and sharing of ideas. The topics of the day include implementation of bilingual nurse training, models and ideas for Finnish language teaching in nursing, and enabling Finnish language learning in the workplace. More information available in Finnish at kielibuusti.fi.

Higher education-focused webinar: The role of higher education institutions’ language strategy work in promoting language learning for international students and staff will be held on Tues 14 May at from 13.00 to 15.00. The webinar will present examples of language strategy work that can be used to promote language learning among international students, staff and faculty, presented by Sanni Heinzmann (Aalto University) and Eveliina Korpela (Metropolia). A more detailed programme can be found on the Kielibuusti website (available in Finnish). Registration has already begun, but you can also join without registering.

Please remember that Kielibuusti is also active on social media, so follow the project also on X and LinkedIn, and especially the Finnish teachers of higher education Facebook group as well as the Kielibuusti Facebook page.

Good content for teaching and for recommending to students:

The kielibuusti.fi website contains useful content for employers, such as tips regarding language-aware recruitment and language-aware onboarding (latter currently available in Finnish, English version will be published later this year). Also higher education institutions can benefit from these contents when recruiting international experts. The materials give a good idea of what kind of issues should be taken into consideration, so that the higher education institution can successfully recruit and onboard international experts.

Information of language strategy (available in Finnish) is also useful for employers. The content provides instructions on what a language strategy means, why an organisation should have one and how to draw one up. These themes can be explored on kielibuusti.fi before the aforementioned higher education webinar about language strategies.

Kielibuusti.fi also offers many contents that are useful for people working in HEIs, regardless of their role. These include, for example, advise to organise a multilingual event, and tools such as language user profiles, which can be used to make visible the wishes, needs and challenges related to the use of languages and language learning, which are often sensitive. The profiles also help to plan the workplace language support needs and interaction so that all members of the work community can feel heard.

We recommend career counsellors to watch the aforementioned TE live broadcast "Working in Finland – why and how to learn Finnish?" and recommend it to current and future language learners. Please also share with your students the information regarding Kielibuusti’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, which have interesting new content; the Finnish Calendar / Finnish Features series tells about Finnish holidays, traditions and features, and there are also many new short videos.

The next newsletter will be published in early autumn, so have a nice spring and enjoy the upcoming summer!

Sincerely,

The Kielibuusti team

Ps. If you have subscribed to the Kielibuusti newsletter, you will receive an e-mail with a link to the Kielibuusti.fi website each time the next newsletter is published. If you no longer wish to receive these e-mails, please let us know at kielibuusti-info(at)aalto.fi. If you are not yet a member of the Kielibuusti network and would like to receive an email reminder every time a new newsletter is published, please subscribe to the newsletter via either the link at the bottom of the Kielibuusti homepage.

Recent news from Kielibuusti: 

During the spring, Kielibuusti has organised two webinars for international experts on the importance of language skills in Finnish working life (27 February and 10 April). The events have provided information on kielibuusti.fi's possibilities to support the language learning. Kielibuusti also participated a TE live broadcast "Working in Finland – why and how to learn Finnish?" organized by TE Services, which can be viewed online.

At the same time, Kielibuusti has reached international experts, employers and other stakeholders at many events, such as ones organised in cooperation with Aalto University’s Kielibuusti team and the City of Espoo. Kielibuusti has participated in various events and webinars with stands, pitches and lectures, thus reaching a large number of international experts and companies. For example, approximately 700 jobseekers and 40 companies participated in the Espoo Talent Match event on 20 March, and the Hello Espoo event on 7 March featured about 50 associations and public organisations providing services to Espoo residents, as well as about 450 new international residents of Espoo as an audience. The Espoo Career Bootcamp event on 29 February was attended by approximately 150 international experts and 48 organisations.

Kielibuusti has also participated in events aimed at employers, such as the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce's event "Succeed in recruiting international students" on 14 March. Services supporting the recruitment of international experts are now listed on the website (available in Finnish) of Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce. According to the feedback, the event was as rewarding for the participants as it was for the organisers, and there is clearly a need for such discussion and encounters in the future as well. The event had 40 participants and 34 organisers.

Kielibuusti is also participating in a pilot for language-aware recruitment as a joint project with the City of Espoo, Omnia and OP Uusimaa. The pilot explores how identifying the linguistic needs in a certain position and redesigning tasks can enable the recruitment of international experts with developing Finnish language skills.

The labour market shortage, and international experts as one solution to it, is a hot topic also in the media. Kielibuusti participates in the discussion in different arenas and highlights the importance of language learning as part of the issue. For example, the press release The solution to the shortage of experts lies in the Finnish language - this is how employers can support language learners (available in Finnish) clearly pointed out that language learning is an essential part of retaining international talents. Inkeri Lehtimaja from Kielibuusti was interviewed at Huomenta Suomi about whether English should be made an official language alongside Finnish and Swedish. You can watch the interview via the link (available in Finnish).

Employment was also the theme in the latest webinar organized for higher education institutions on 13 March. In the webinar Examples of actions taken by higher education institutions to promote the language skills of international students and improve their employability, Jyrki Rajala (Centria) presented the training model for international experts created in the Export Expert project, and Anna-Riikka Rasa (Metropolia) talked about the functionally bilingual nursing education of the Tokasa project. Inkeri Lehtimaja (Aalto University) gave a presentation on measures to promote language learning and thus employment for international students at the university.

During the spring, Kielibuusti has also organised trainings and events for teachers, such as the webinar Exciting AI – Experiences of using AI tools in language teaching on 5 March and a meeting for those teaching Finnish language courses to staff members of higher education institutions on 9 April.

Coming up next in Kielibuusti: 

Kielibuusti organises a webinar Language solution for internationalising companies – Kielibuusti’s tools for companies on 3 May from 13.00 to 15.00. The language of the webinar is Finnish. The webinar presents the tools offered by the kielibuusti.fi website, which can be used to facilitate the recruitment of international experts to Finnish- or Swedish-speaking work communities and to introduce new linguistic practices. The webinar presents free of charge models which are used to promote the parallel use of Finnish/Swedish and English and to support the language learning of international employees, to mention a few examples. The webinar will also present concrete practices for language-aware recruitment and onboarding, as well as tips everyday situations at the workplace, such as meetings. Sign up by filling in the registration form on 2 May the latest. The event will be recorded, and the recording and materials will be sent to those who have registered.

For the ones working in the field of nursing, the training day Finnish in Nursing 2 might be of interest. The training day will be held at Laurea's Tikkurila campus on 18 April. The target group of the training consists of actors training international nurses all over Finland, Finnish language teachers, nursing teachers, and employer representatives. The training day will include workshop activities and sharing of ideas. The topics of the day include implementation of bilingual nurse training, models and ideas for Finnish language teaching in nursing, and enabling Finnish language learning in the workplace.

During the late spring Kielibuusti will also organise a webinar The role of higher education institutions’ language strategy work in promoting language learning for international students and staff, aimed at higher education institutions,on Tues 14 May at from 13.00 to 15.00. More information available in Finnish at kielibuusti.fi.

Please remember that Kielibuusti is also active on social media, so follow the project also on X and LinkedIn. Also, tip off language learners about kielibuusti.fi website and the Kielibuusti Instagram account, where language tips are posted, with the language learners.

Useful content from Kielibuusti:

The kielibuusti.fi website contains useful content for employers, such as tips regarding language-aware recruitment and language-aware onboarding (latter currently available in Finnish, English version will be published later this year). The materials give a good idea of what kind of issues should be taken into consideration, so that the organization can successfully recruit and onboard the experts.

Kielibuusti.fi also offers many contents that are useful, no matter where or in which position one works. These include, for example, advise to organise a multilingual event, and tools such as language user profiles, which can be used to make visible the wishes, needs and challenges related to the use of languages and language learning, which are often sensitive. The profiles also help to plan the workplace language support needs and interaction so that all members of the work community can feel heard.

Career counsellors should watch a TE live broadcast "Working in Finland – why and how to learn Finnish?" and recommend it to current and future language learners. Please also share with your students the information regarding Kielibuusti’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, which have interesting new content. E.g. The Finnish Calendar / Finnish Features series tells about Finnish holidays, traditions and features, and there are also many new short videos.