Newsletter 10/2024

News and events on Kielibuusti:   

The Kielibuusti project has been active at the conference and network front even during the summer. Inkeri Lehtimaja, Johanna Komppa and Salla Kurhila participated in the Language at work network meeting of Nordic researchers in Stockholm on 11 June 2024. At the meeting, they presented the tools and models developed at Kielibuusti to support multilingual work communities. The meeting was organised in cooperation with Språkrådet, the Swedish authority responsible for language guidance and language policy. 

A larger group of Kielibuusti representatives participated in the AILA conference on applied linguistics in Malaysia on 11–16 August. At the conference, the Kielibuusti representatives held a workshop on the topic Language Learning at Workplace, telling the participants what the Kielibuusti project is all about. For instance, the fact that so much encouragement is provided for learning Finnish or Swedish generated interest among the participants, many of whom work in universities with English as their official working language. In addition, they were interested in the methods used for evaluation and guidance at staff courses in Finnish or in other language workshops.  

Most recently, Kielibuusti representatives held a poster presentation at the EAIE 2024 conference in Toulouse, France on 17–20 September. There, project coordinators Kaisa Oikarinen and Anna Sundqvist presented some tools used by Kielibuusti to support language learning. Each year, the conference brings together stakeholders working on internationalisation in higher education. This year, it attracted more than 7,000 participants. Integrating language learning into everyday work and providing selected materials and resources outside language courses inspired discussion among the participants. The link between language proficiency and employment is topical in the field of higher education in many other countries as well, so there were plenty of questions about the work community models developed in Kielibuusti. The national cooperation between the higher education institutions involved in the Kielibuusti project also interested the participants. 

In addition to conferences, Kielibuusti presented the project at Talent Boost Newsroom on 4 September and at the the PIKEUS project workshop of E2 Research held on 12 September. The PIKEUS project seeks solutions for the orientation of foreign employees and the everyday practices of multicultural work in SMEs.   

Kielibuusti has continued its work to reach employers in other ways as well. On 5 September, Johanna Komppa and Inkeri Lehtimaja gave a presentation “Supporting language learning at workplaces” in a City of Espoo webinar. They also led a panel discussion related to the topic with S2 (Finnish as a second language) outreach teacher Virpi Heini from the Omnia Skills Centre for immigrants and children’s instructor student Maricar Siponen and her supervisor Terhi Tenkanen from the Northern Tapiola day-care centre as participants.  

On 20 September, Johanna Komppa and Inkeri Lehtimaja held a workshop on the language awareness in work communities to the supervisors of the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce. On 25 September, Sanni Heinzmann was interviewed at the Rekrytori for Internationals event. Cooperation between Kielibuusti, the City of Espoo and the bank OP Uusimaa in language-supported recruitment has also progressed: OP published a job advertisement on 19 August and received a lot of good applications from experts with an S2 background.  

On 17 September Kielibuusti released the online learning material Sidu! Det svenska i Finland. The material consists altogether of 20 modules about Swedish-speaking towns and Finland-Swedish culture and society. There are also several video interviews with international talents in Finland that have learned or are learning Swedish. Sidu! is mostly based on visual elements like videos, 360-environments, pictures and maps. You can access Sidu! on two different platforms: Digicampus that requires log in (for example HAKA or Google) and Thinglink, which doesn’t require log in. The main language of Sidu! is Swedish but we are producing more translations in English and Swedish as we speak. Sidu! is produced in cooperation with Aalto Online Learning. 

A new Kielibuusti-themed article was published in the Finnish Network for Language Education Policies’ online publication Kieli, koulutus ja yhteiskunta: Kielikahvila työajalla, perehdytysyksikön kautta osaksi työyhteisöä vai talon oma kielenopettaja? Kolme ratkaisua kielenoppimisen tukemiseen työssä [in Finnish] (Johanna Komppa, Annika Backlund, Katri Lätti, Helena Raappana ja Eija Rannikko). It presents three solutions each of which requires a different amount of resources to support the learning of professional language in the work community. All of them aim to establish permanent activities to support language learning, so that the responsibility for them would not be left on the shoulders of a single colleague interested in language matters. 

What's next in Kielibuusti   

During the autumn, two more webinars will be available for higher education institutions: 

How to bring international students to higher education institutions and make them proficient in Finnish – examples of projects and practices of higher education institutions and sharing them on the Kielibuusti.fi website will be organised on Wednesday 9 October at 14:30–16:00. The webinar will present two examples of projects that offer a model and inspiration to other higher education institutions. Outi Väyrynen (University of Eastern Finland) will present UEF’s new grant, which is based on learning Finnish in bachelor’s and master’s programmes arranged in English. Elina Palola and Liisa Väisänen (University of Oulu) and Pauliina Keskinarkaus and Sinikka Vuonokari-Kämäräinen (University of Lapland) will present the project Towards university education – preparatory education for immigrants. There will also be a discussion in small groups on how the contents, models and materials produced in higher education institutions and projects could be made available on the Kielibuusti.fi website even after the project has ended. A more detailed programme can be viewed on the Kielibuusti website. The registration to the event has already started, but you can also join in without registration. 

The last webinar of the Kielibuusti project for higher education institutions will be held on Tuesday 19 November at 13:00–14:30. More specific information on the presentations will be provided later. However, the theme is continuity, this time especially from the perspective of maintaining the higher education network created in the project. So, please follow the News and events section on the Kielibuusti.fi website, where the details and registration link will be updated. 

The closing event of the Kielibuusti project Tackling the talent shortage with Finnish and Swedish skills will be organised on 5 November 2024 at 14:00–16:00. As the world of work is becoming increasingly international, we need effective practices to support multilingualism and to boost the learning of Finland’s official languages. Join us at the closing event of the Kielibuusti project, where you will hear interesting talks about the significance of language skills in working life and highlights on the successes reached in the Kielibuusti project. The programme will include   

• Statement by Suzanne Innes-Stubb, Executive in Residence, Aalto University/Spouse of the President of the Republic 
• Interview of Siamäk Naghian, CEO of Genelec Oy and Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering Alumnus of the Year 2020 

You can participate in the event onsite at Aalto University campus in Espoo or watch a live stream. Read more about the event and sign up on our website! The number of seats available in the local event is limited. 

There will also be several events for employers and stakeholders already in the coming weeks: 

• At the Aalto Thesis Day event on 2 October, Sanni Heinzmann will talk to company representatives and international students about multilingual skills in the world of work and language learning at work 
• On 3 October, the City of Espoo’s Career Bootcamp event will again feature a pitch by Kielibuusti  
• At the Talent Boost Network Day on 9 October, you can meet Kielibuusti representatives at their stand in the Team Finland building in Ruoholahti, Helsinki. 

Please remember that Kielibuusti is also active on social media. So, follow the project on the Kielibuusti Facebook page, X and In LinkedIn! in the Facebook group Korkeakoulutettujen suomenopettajat, which is intended for teachers in particular. 
 
 

Useful content for teaching and tips for students:  

Based on the results of a user survey conducted in spring, the Kielibuusti website has been updated both visually and structurally. Its navigation, content structure and titling have been improved, and the appearance has also been renewed. The green section at the bottom of the learner’s page now also provides shortcuts to finding self-study materials. The employer website has been completely revamped. 

The website also features plenty of new content, such as Follow the media and learn Finnish, suited for teaching and self-study. The page also contains a link to Kielibuusti's new web page Language learning tips, with lot of ideas on how to develop your language skills through the media. There is also a list of the most popular social media influencers: YouTubers and Instagrammers and the themes of their channels. 

The list of learning applications and digital materials recommended by Kielibuusti is also continuously updated. In the summer, Kielibuusti also added, for example, TalkPal, an AI application to practise speaking. The list in its entirety can be found in the section Find online learning materials. 

Many of the already existing materials on the website have also been supplemented. For example, the materials on the page Learn Finnish at Work – phrases for the coffee room  have now been complemented with explanations in English.  
 
There are new blog posts on the Kielibuusti website, such as Minun kieliäppini – Kielibuustin kieliharjoittelija suosittelee 6 digitaalista apua suomen kielen oppimiseen (Boris Kovalev). In the blog post in Finnish, a language trainee participating in integration training who worked at Kielibuusti, reveals which language learning applications he thinks are suited for Finnish learners like him with about level A2 skills in Finnish.  

Later, a video article titled “Ummikko vai ekspertti – miksi suomen kieli on alussa niin hidas kieli oppia” (Laura Uusitalo) will be added to the website. Currently, you can find the article by clicking this link: “Finnish language is like a jumbo jet.It takes a long runway before you can fly.Watch the video to see what makes Finnish a slow language to learn.Fortunately, slow does not mean the same as difficult.”[both audio and titles in Finnish] 

Remember to also make the students aware of Kielibuusti’s Instagram and Facebook pages, to which new content is added all the time. For example, the series of posts called Finnish Calendar/Finnish Features presents Finnish holidays, traditions and features. There are also many short videos available on Kielibuusti’s social media pages. 

The next newsletter will be published at the beginning of December. Have a beautiful and sunny autumn!  

Best regards,  

Kielibuusti team  

P.S. If you have subscribed to the Kielibuusti newsletter, you will be notified by email every time a new one is published on the website and receive a link to the newsletter. If you no longer wish to receive e-mail, please let us know at kielibuusti-info(at)aalto.fi. If, on the other hand, you have not yet joined the Kielibuusti network but wish to receive an email reminder whenever a new newsletter is published, please subscribe to the newsletter via the link at the bottom of the Kielibuusti home page.   

News and events from Kielibuusti:   

The Kielibuusti project has been active at the conference and network front even during the summer. Inkeri Lehtimaja, Johanna Komppa and Salla Kurhila participated in the Language at work network meeting of Nordic researchers in Stockholm on 11 June 2024. At the meeting, they presented the tools and models developed at Kielibuusti to support multilingual work communities. The meeting was organised in cooperation with Språkrådet, the Swedish authority responsible for language policy and planning. 

A group of Kielibuusti representatives participated in the AILA conference on applied linguistics in Malaysia on 11–16 August. At the conference, Kielibuusti held a workshop on the topic Language Learning at Workplace, presenting the Kielibuusti project to the participants. Many of the participants work in universities with English as their official working language. They were interested in how much Finnish and Swedish learning is encouraged. 

Most recently, Kielibuusti representatives held a poster presentation at the EAIE 2024 conference in Toulouse, France on 17–20 September. Kielibuusti’s project coordinators Kaisa Oikarinen and Anna Sundqvist presented some of the Kielibuusti tools to support language learning. Each year, the conference brings together stakeholders working on internationalisation in higher education. This year, it attracted more than 7,000 participants. Integrating language learning into everyday work and providing selected materials and resources outside language courses inspired discussion among the participants. The link between language proficiency and employment is topical in the field of higher education in many other countries, so there were plenty of questions about the work community models developed in Kielibuusti. The national cooperation between the higher education institutions involved in the Kielibuusti project also interested the participants. 

Kielibuusti has also continued its work to reach employers. On 5 September, Johanna Komppa and Inkeri Lehtimaja gave a presentation “Supporting language learning at workplaces” in a City of Espoo webinar. They also led a panel discussion related to the topic with S2 (Finnish as a second language). Other participants were teacher Virpi Heini from the Omnia Skills Centre for immigrants and children’s instructor student Maricar Siponen and her supervisor Terhi Tenkanen from the day care center Pohjois-Tapiolan päiväkoti. 

On 20 September, Johanna Komppa and Inkeri Lehtimaja held a workshop on the language awareness in work communities to the supervisors of the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce. On 25 September, Sanni Heinzmann was interviewed at the Rekrytori for Internationals event. Cooperation between Kielibuusti, the City of Espoo and the bank OP Uusimaa in language-supported recruitment has also moved forward: OP published the job advertisement on 19 August and received many good applications from experts with an S2 background.  

A new Kielibuusti-themed article was published in the Finnish Network for Language Education Policies’ online publication Kieli, koulutus ja yhteiskunta: Kielikahvila työajalla, perehdytysyksikön kautta osaksi työyhteisöä vai talon oma kielenopettaja? Kolme ratkaisua kielenoppimisen tukemiseen työssä [in Finnish] (Johanna Komppa, Annika Backlund, Katri Lätti, Helena Raappana ja Eija Rannikko). It presents three solutions each of which requires a different amount of resources to support the learning of professional language in the work community. All of them aim to establish permanent activities to support language learning. This way the responsibility for these activities would not be left on the shoulders of a single colleague interested in language matters. 

On 17 September Kielibuusti released the online learning material Sidu! Det svenska i Finland. The material consists altogether of 20 modules about Swedish-speaking towns and Finland-Swedish culture and society. There are also several video interviews with international talents in Finland that have learned or are learning Swedish. Sidu! is mostly based on visual elements like videos, 360-environments, pictures and maps. You can access Sidu! on two different platforms: Digicapmus that requires log in (for example HAKA or Google) and Thinglink, which doesn’t require log in. The main language of Sidu! is Swedish but we are producing more translations in English and Swedish as we speak. Sidu! is produced in cooperation with Aalto Online Learning. 

What's next in Kielibuusti   

Kielibuusti will participate in several events targeted for employers and stakeholders in the coming weeks: 

• At the Aalto Thesis Day event on 2 October Sanni Heinzmann will talk to company representatives and international students about multilingual skills in the Finnish labour market and language learning at work. 
• On 3 October, the City of Espoo’s Career Bootcamp event will again feature a pitch by Kielibuusti.  
• At the Talent Boost Network Day on 9 October, you can meet Kielibuusti representatives at their stand in the Team Finland building in Ruoholahti, Helsinki. 

The closing event of the Kielibuusti project Tackling the talent shortage with Finnish and Swedish skills will be organised on 5 November 2024 at 14:00–16:00. The Finnish labour market is becoming more international, so we need effective practices to support multilingualism and to boost the learning of the official languages in Finland. We welcome you to the event! You will hear interesting speeches about the importance of language skills in employment and highlights of the Kielibuusti project. Among other topics, the programme includes: 

• Keynote speech by Suzanne Innes-Stubb, Executive in Residence, Aalto University/Spouse of the President of the Republic 
• Interview of Siamäk Naghian, CEO of Genelec Oy and Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering Alumnus of the Year 2020 

You can participate in the event onsite at the Aalto University campus in Espoo or watch the live stream. Read more about the event and sign up on our website! The number of seats available in the on-site event is limited. 

During the autumn, two more webinars will be available for higher education institution staffs:  

• How to bring international students to higher education institutions and make them proficient in Finnish – examples of projects and practices of higher education institutions and sharing them on the Kielibuusti.fi website will be organised on Wednesday 9 October at 14:30–16:00  
• The last higher education webinar of the project is to be held on Tuesday 19 November at 13:00–14:30. It will focus on continuity, this time especially from the perspective of maintaining the higher education network created in the project. More detailed information and registration links can be found in the News and events section of the Kielibuusti.fi website. 

Useful content provided by Kielibuusti: 

Based on the results of the user survey conducted last spring, we have updated the visuals and the structures of the Kielibuusti website. The navigation, content structure and titles have been improved, and the appearance has also been renewed. The green section at the bottom of the learner’s page now also provides shortcuts to finding self-study materials. The employer website has been completely updated. Its content has now been structured into easy-to-use “product cards”. 

The content of the pages is constantly updated, and many of the already existing materials have been supplemented. For example, the materials on the page Learn Finnish at Work – phrases for the coffee room  have now been complemented with explanations in English.  

There are new blog posts on the Kielibuusti website: 

• Minun kieliäppini – Kielibuustin kieliharjoittelija suosittelee 6 digitaalista apua suomen kielen oppimiseen (Boris Kovalev) [in Finnish]. In the blog post, a language trainee participating in integration training who worked at Kielibuusti, tells which language learning applications he thinks are suited for Finnish learners like him with about level A2 skills in Finnish.  
• Our two other language trainees Jonathan Olivo and Olga Mikolaenko write in Swedish about their experiences in Finland and working as a trainee at Kielibuusti in Finland: Mitt språkkliga äventyr (by Olivo) and Språkpratik på Språkboost: Olga berättar (by Mikolaenko).  
• A video article “Ummikko vai ekspertti – miksi suomen kieli on alussa niin hidas kieli oppia” (Laura Uusitalo) will be added to the website later in the autumn. Currently, you can find the article on the Haaga-Helia website. [both the audio and titles are in Finnish] 
   

Don’t forget that Kielibuusti is active on social media too. Follow the project on the Kielibuusti Facebook page, X and Linkedin. You could also make students aware of Kielibuusti’s Instagram and Facebook pages, where we upload new content regularly. One example is the content series of Finnish Calendar/Finnish Features that presents Finnish holidays and traditions. There are also many short videos available on Kielibuusti’s social media pages. 

The next newsletter will be published at the beginning of December. Have a beautiful and sunny autumn!  

Best regards,  

the Kielibuusti team  

P.S. If you have subscribed to the Kielibuusti newsletter, you will be notified by email every time a new one is published on the website and receive a link to the newsletter. If you no longer wish to receive e-mail, please let us know at kielibuusti-info(at)aalto.fi. If, on the other hand, you have not yet joined the Kielibuusti network but wish to receive an email reminder whenever a new newsletter is published, please subscribe to the newsletter via the link at the bottom of the Kielibuusti home page.