The Support of Finnish Language in Degree in Social Services : Finnish Language Support for International Students

Panu Kallio. Project for the Support of Finnish Language in Degree Programme in Social Services. Helsinki, Finland. Autumn 2017. 40 Pages. Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree Programme in Social Services (DSS) and Community Development. Bachelor of Social Services. This thesis is a project oriented work that was carried out by a team of five people, which consisted of three Diaconia University of Applied Sciences staff and by two students Panu Kallio and Irene Asare. However, this thesis is written by Panu Kallio and the Irene Asare’s work is only referenced in the text. The reason for this is that Panu did his Bachelor’s Thesis for this project, while Irene did one of her study modules assignments for the project. However, both students worked together on planning of the project, materials, preparation and shared their respective findings and notes on the meetings they had with project team members and the international DSS students they mentored. The project began on 3rd of April and lasted until 5th of May. During this time, the language mentors provided Finnish language mentoring for a total of 12 international first year DSS students, who we divided according to their skill with Finnish language and how long they had been living in Finland. Since a project of this nature had never been done before in Diaconia University of Applied Sciences, this gave them an opportunity to see if this type of language support for international students in a placement environment could work. Following objectives were set out for this project: Students will gain the confidence to speak Finnish in their placements, give international students the confidence to apply to Finnish working places and organisations and give an opportunity for the students to practice Finnish in their practical placements.The planning for this project began on February and the language support began on 3rd of April and ending on 5th of May. Thus there was a lot of practical work involved within this project. Therefore, this is more of a project report on what was done with this project and is less theoretical or research oriented