What are professional language skills
Professional language is not learned on its own at work, but language learning requires input from the workplace and the work community.
Language exercises during the traineeship
Language exercises before, during and after the traineeship support the learning of professional language. Here you can find tips for good exercises to practice the language, especially at the B1-B2 level.
Language exercises for the traineeship
Language proficiency consists of many things. Language proficiency also includes courage to react in different situations regardless of errors, ability to recognise factors affecting the situation, and skills to express yourself with gestures, expressions and visual messages. Before the traineeship, it is important that the student maps out their language proficiency level and reflects on their goals for the traineeship.
Keeping a language diary is a good tool for achieving the goals. The tasks in the language diary reflect on: What does the student already know and what can they manage with in Finnish during the traineeship? What new things can they learn about the Finnish language and their own language and communication skills during the traineeship?
See also the section “Traineeship is also language practice”.
Go through these questions with your traineeship instructor.
- What are you good at? What do you want to develop in? What is the best thing about your communication skills?
- What kind of oral communication situations will you encounter at the traineeship? (For example, Guiding children, morning meeting, negotiation with the customer.) Who is involved?
- What kind of written communication situations will you encounter at the traineeship? In what channels might you find texts?
Fill in your language journal independently. Did you predict the situations you would experience at the traineeship?
- What kind of oral communication situations have you encountered at the traineeship? Who was present? List the communication situations and add an emoji that describes how you felt in the situation.
- What kind of written messages have you written during the traineeship? What was the channel of the texts? List the communication situations and add an emoji that describes how you felt in the situation.
- Build your vocabulary. Write down a sentence or phrase in your language diary every day that you heard/saw during the traineeship and that was new for you. In which situation did you hear/see the sentence? Start using the new word or phrase! (See also the appendix Pocketbook Method.)
- Write down important situations at your traineeship every week. The situations can be positive or negative. Explain:
Who was there?
Where and when did this happen?
What happened?
How did you feel?
How did you manage?
Why did you manage well? Why didn't you manage well?
Record three situations every week!
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Select 1-3 recurring or important situations that you recorded in your language journal. Discuss the situations with the instructor:
How do you act in the situation?
How did you feel?
Could you have done something different?
Did something in the background affect the situation?
What did you learn about the situation?
Prepare for the future: what would you do next time in a similar situation?
- Think about the communication situations of the traineeship using a fourfold chart (see the appendix Language Diary below). What kinds of situations are easy but boring for you (boredom area), what are easy and interesting (comfort area), what are boring and difficult (discomfort area) and what are interesting but difficult (development area) situations?
- Enter the communication situations in the four fields in the appropriate place. Discuss with your instructor:
a) How could you make boring situations more interesting?
b) How could you make uncomfortable situations easier?
c) How could you bring situations in the development area to the comfort area?
PDF materials in Finnish, not translated.
See also
How to guide students in a language-aware manner
Language-aware guidance require cooperation between the subject teacher, the language teacher and the traineeship instructor.
Traineeship is also language practice
Language-aware traineeship practices support all students regardless of their level of proficiency.
What kind of language skills are needed at the traineeship
Different workplaces require different language skills. It is important for work places to consider the language proficiency required in the work tasks in advance.
©2023 Eveliina Korpela, Hanna Aho, Eevamaija Iso-Heiniemi, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences
Language exercises during the traineeship material 2023, produced by Eveliina Korpela, Hanna Aho, and Eevamaija Iso-Heiniemi in co-operation with Finnish teachers in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, is licensed under a CC-BY Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The material can be found at kielibuusti.fi. Photos: All rights reserved.