Five-Month Intensive Finnish Course

As an unemployed immigrant who had been living in Finland for less than three years, I was eligible for integration training. For me this meant a full-time, five-month Finnish course, which I began during the second week of January. Unlike the first language-culture courses that I participated in during my first summer in Finland, the main purpose of this course was language learning.

Having not attended in-person classes or many group events since March 2020, I was understandably nervous to be around a bunch of people all day, every weekday. But I had also struggled through a few online Finnish classes, so I was excited for the opportunity. The language test I took in November placed me in Module 3, the last of three courses offered by the unemployment office (without applying). On the first day, Modules 2 and 3 met together in the auditorium of Saimaan ammattiopisto Sampo, a vocational school about 20 minutes by foot from my apartment. My initial worries about not being able to understand the teachers immediately dissolved when they began speaking. I was definitely in the right group. Anticipating such close contact with people, I rescheduled my third COVID vaccination from February to the first Friday of classes.

As with the first, Finland has been fairly slow with giving out additional COVID vaccinations. At the time of publishing this blog post, healthy adults under 60 years of age have still not been eligible to receive COVID booster shots ( the fourth dose).

After introductions, we picked up our books and headed to separate classrooms. Our module received Suomen Mestari 3, which I had studied in a Finnish course the previous autumn. I was thankful for the review since that 90-minute, twice-weekly Zoom course starting after 6pm was not the most suitable for me. We started off with 19 people, lost two to Module 2 and another to pregnancy leave. Of the remaining 16, at least 10 spoke Russian, which made sense due to proximity. The countries represented in my class included:

• Russia
• Japan
• Nicaragua
• Kosovo
• East Turkistan
• Brazil
• Belarus
• Lithuania
• Ukraine

While I don’t have any particular comment except to condemn the aggression, I wanted to acknowledge that the Russian attack on Ukraine occurred a little more than a month after the class began.

While technically seven hours per day, we had an hour of homework, meaning we were in the classroom for six hours daily. This was a long time to be wearing a mask, but I was committed. Originally, only one guy in the classroom wasn’t wearing a mask, so I moved across the room to avoid him. By day three, another few people had grown tired of masks, so I switched to my “good” masks. And by the end, even fewer people wore masks. Throughout the class we had several corona exposures – at least four – as expected. After one exposure we were all sent home to study remotely with the teacher, but most often we had the option to stay and wear masks or study the material at home, unguided. Of course I chose to stay.

This feels strange to write now since most COVID restrictions were lifted over half a year ago. However, the worry of becoming infected was very real back then.

Within the first month, there was already a COVID exposure, leaving just 6 people left in class that day. At some point the school provided free COVID tests for everyone.

Since I started with Module 3, I noticed that many people had already found their group from the previous two modules. Luckily I was bold enough to approach one table on the first day, and we ended up becoming friends during the course and beyond.

As in a typical language class, we learned grammar lessons from the book, answered conversation questions, watched news, and wrote short texts. In addition to these traditional teaching methods, we learned in many other ways, including:

• word-based card games
• first aid training
• art museum trips
• Friday work practice (This was optional. Initially I tried out an elementary school, but the daycare’s structure was a better fit.)
• Kahoot trivia quizzes
• city library tour, including the simplified Finnish section (By the end of the year, I finished four books!)
• Finnish music

During the last four weeks of the course, we all participated in a Finnish language work practice at different companies, which we found upon our own initiative. Around the same time that we needed to select a company, I applied for and was offered the Sustainability Research Trainee position at the UPM Research Center in Lappeenranta. During the interview I brought up the idea of completing my work practice before officially starting as a summer trainee, to which we agreed. So in mid-April I began, where the idea was to work in English and attempt to do everything else in Finnish, a scary thought since I hadn’t used much Finnish in the real world up to this point. But it somehow worked. I spoke with my boss, participated in team meetings, listened to info sessions, and interacted with people during coffee breaks and lunch in Finnish. While speaking was difficult, everyone was understanding and helped me practice. Overall, I found the experience incredibly helpful in that it gave me the confidence to speak and allowed me to discover how much Finnish I had already learned.

After the four weeks, we still had one day of class left, where we discussed our work practices, evaluated the course, and had a small celebration. Three days later, we took the Yleiset kielitutkinnot (YKI) or National Certificate of Language Proficiency test. It is a test that examines speaking, listening, reading, and writing in order to officially prove one’s language skills. Commonly, the intermediate level is used to apply for Finnish citizenship. Though I left the five-hour-long test completely unsure of the results – especially speaking – I was happy to receive the passing results the next month!

With five months of Finnish behind me, I was grateful to visit home for a few weeks with my new fiancée, Linnea, before returning to UPM as a summer trainee.

Life outside of Finnish class

Linnea and I got engaged!