Case Studies

Languages in working life and intercultural communication are included in the project as a concrete co-operation between target groups (immigrants, personnel at the workplace and customers). The Finnish language is used in job performance, recruitment and working life communication across different vocational fields. In other words, as a language at work among other languages.
The target group - adult immigrants at work speaking Finnish as a second language regardless of their background - was selected because of their increasing number in the metropolitan area and the multicultural and diversity challenges due to this phenomenon for both individuals and organisations. Obviously there was and is a constant need for tailor-made field-specific Finnish language training at the workplace. The project made it possible to put the knowhow of the organisation in practise methodologically and on a large scale.

The objective of the project was to support the career development of immigrants, to enhance diversity and to improve language training methods by developing new ways of learning Finnish at the working place.

The language training courses are planned together with the co-ordinator and the workplaces according to their needs; new groups on relevant fields and levels can be started in every 6 months. Feedback has been collected from students and workplaces and the co-ordinator has received written reports about the courses. Evaluation is made and training plans developed in co-operational trainer meetings.

The results are assessed using feedback and questionnaires for personnel and management at the workplace. According to these indicators both the language and vocational skills of immigrants have improved during the project.

Amiedu applied for the label because we felt that attention should be paid to field specific language training at the workplace as part of the development of employees’ individual vocational skills and as a way of enhancing diversity in multicultural organisations.

Dissemination and exploitation has been done in Amiedu by informing interest groups and the public about the ELL and our activities in introducing the possibilities of Finnish language training as a way of improving the vocational skills of immigrant employees and facilitating the development of multicultural workplaces.

The ELL has made our project more widely known, and therefore made it possible to inform the public about the aims and objectives of functional and communicative language training and the role of Finnish as a second language as a means of enhancing diversity in the working life.

To plan and develop quality language learning initiatives one must be aware of the trends present in the local working life and environment .One should be able not only to react but to anticipate the needs of the different actors in the community. To achieve this enough stability in resourcing is needed. In addition to this, internal flexibility from educational organisations and extensive co-operation across domains is required.
To exploit the awarded ELL initiatives a permanent up-to-date internet site would be useful.

Intercultural dialogue
Cooperation with the wokring life
Integration of migrants into society

Intercultural dialouge and close connections with the working life, taking into consideration the needs for language skills in working life. Innovative ways of teaching languages. Teaching of minority or less spoken languages. The project support migrants to integrate into the Finnish society and into working life. The model is easily transferred to other work places as the number of migrants in Finland is increasing.