1. Introduction
This study focuses on the use and needs of the English language in the Finnish working life, more specifically in export industry companies in Eastern Finland. The accelerating
globalization and the spread of the English language have established English as an integral part of the every-day life of Finns. English has achieved an unwavering status as the primary lingua franca of our time, and its use in Finland has increased to an unprecedentedly high level (Leppänen & Nikula 2008: 16–21). English is used in the media, leisure activities, work contexts and everyday communication (Leppänen et al. 2009: 51–54, 92–100). Even if one does not actively use the language, the exposure to it is nearly inevitable. This increased English use and its consequences have attracted a growing amount of research and interest in utilizing the information on how English is used in different domains. As previously
mentioned, one of these contexts is work, which will be the main focus of this study.
The aim here is to find out in which kind of situations and tasks, such as customer service, meetings or reading and writing different documents, the English language is used in Finnish working life, more specifically in Eastern Finland. Another aim of the study is to find out which aspects of language skills are the most needed in the North Karelian working life.
Furthermore, the study sets out to create a comprehensive and detailed picture of the language needs of the companies by gathering descriptions, examples, explanations and reasons concerning the different situations of English use and the different aspects of
language skills. Moreover, study intends to acquire additional information about the nature of language use and needs in the region and the overall importance of the English by examining the frequency of English and the importance of English in comparison with other languages.
Additionally, the study aims to provide information on the development of the English language needs in the region by analyzing the past and future English language needs of the target companies. The study has been conducted in collaboration with the Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Karelia UAS): the institution has assisted in the collection of data for the study, and the aim is to use the results for developing and allocating the English teaching in the university of applied sciences.
2
The region was chosen, as it offers a chance to co-operate with the local university of applied sciences and utilize the results in practice. Additionally, recent research (Kolehmainen et al.
2020a) has found Eastern Finland surprisingly multilingual, warranting for more research in the region. Kolehmainen et al. (2020b: 7–10, 24) note that while the region has previously been regarded as a rather monolingual area with Finnish being the only commonly spoken language, many other languages, such as English, Spanish, Russian or Serbian, have their uses among different groups and domains. Kolehmainen et al. (2020b: 10) add that the strong position of English as an undisputed lingua franca holds true in Eastern Finland as well.
However, the status of English in Eastern Finland is quite recent according to Kolehmainen et al. (2020b: 10), as historically the use of English has not been very prevalent in the region, nor has the language held any significant prestige. The use of English has arrived in the wake of globalization, immigration and higher education. Kolehmainen et al. (2020a) present various articles that give a glimpse of the use of English in different domains in Eastern Finland, such as leisure activities (see Paulasto 2020) or internet and social media (see Penttilä 2020;
Laitinen et al. 2020). Economic and Industrial life are mentioned as important sources for multilingualism in the region (Kolehmainen et al. 2020a: 9–10, 23), but no specific research was conducted or included where the focus is on present time language use in the context of work. This leaves a clear avenue for further research in the field of English language use and needs in the domain of working life.
With the help of examining the situations of language use in the area, the purpose of this study is to chart the English language needs of companies in Eastern Finland. This is done by interviewing the executives and employers of export industry companies in Eastern Finland.
The study utilizes the perspective of the executive roles of the company, as the purpose is to achieve a more complete picture of the regional language needs. Executives are usually able to provide information about the language needs of the whole company, which offers a broader perspective than a focus on the limited language use situations a single employee engages in.
3 The research questions for this study are:
1. In what kind of situations and tasks is English needed in North Karelian companies?
2. What aspects of English language skills do North Karelian companies need the most from their employees?
To justify the topic of this research, the study has a practical motivation in functioning as a language needs analysis for developing the language teaching in higher education in the Karelia UAS, which is located in Joensuu, Eastern Finland. Language needs analyses are studies or reports that aim to chart what kind of language skills are needed among a certain group of people in a certain domain. In this study the aim is to find out what kind of English language skills are needed in export industry companies in Eastern Finland. The results of the study can then be utilized in the corresponding fields in higher education, which in this case are the English teaching and education in the degree programs of engineering and business in Karelia UAS.
Additionally, the study is academically relevant: previous studies that on some level examine work-related, situational or skill-related language use (Leppänen et al. 2009) or conduct a language needs analysis nationally (Huhta 1999, 2010) or regionally (Airola 2004) have either different foci or are possibly outdated. Leppänen et al. (2009) have a more general approach, as their study is more of an explorative survey looking to map the use English in Finland through numerous different points of view, such as the role of English in the informants’ life, the use of English in different domains, such as work, free-time or internet, the meaning of English compared to their first language or the role of English in Finland in the future. In the study, work is not explored to a detailed extent, nor does the study offer any qualitative approaches or description.
Huhta (2010), on the other hand, focuses more on defining the method of language needs analysis and exploring its uses, rather than focusing on actually specifying the needs of a certain target group. In her study on business and industry language needs (Huhta 1999) she
4
provides an extensive language needs analysis, which offers both qualitative and quantitative results and uses a very similar premise to the present study. However, in contrast with the present study, the focus of her study is on multiple languages, and the results are from 20 years ago, so it is reasonable to expect that changes in language needs have occurred.
Airola’s (2004) work is a report that surveys the language needs of corporations in Northern Karelia, focusing on comparing the need for different languages, as well as the frequency of different situations in which languages are needed. Her study is similar to the present study in region but offers no qualitative or explorative results on corporate English needs. Similar to Huhta (1999), the study is possibly somewhat outdated, leaving the present study plenty of room to explore the current language needs in the region and uncover possible recently emerged needs. Furthermore, all of the mentioned previous studies offer great possibilities for points of comparison with the present study to illustrate changes or directions in the language needs: Airola (2004) regionally, Huhta (1999) on qualitative aspects, and Leppänen et al. (2009) as the most recent study before the present study. Furthermore, one of the reasons I chose this topic and perspective for my research was a personal interest in the subject matter of work relevance and professional use of the English language, as I study to become a language teacher and a guidance counsellor. Additionally, the practical aspect of the study and cooperation with Karelia UAS provided me with an invaluable opportunity to prepare tasks related to institution research and development, as well as practice my project working skills.
The paper includes a theoretical framework for the study, description of the method and materials, qualitative, explorative and descriptive results from interviews, and some discussion and conclusions of the main findings. The paper is structured to follow the conventions of an MA thesis. After the introduction, the status of English is discussed in the second section, including some literature about the status of English in Finland as well as main findings in the previous studies on the use of English in the Finnish working life. The third section follows on the concept of language needs analysis and presents some previous studies on language needs analysis in Finland. These are followed by the theoretical
framework for different aspects of language skills, such as listening comprehension or
5
pronunciation. The fourth section introduces the methods and materials for the study. In the fifth section, the results of the study are presented and analyzed in the context of the
theoretical framework and previous studies, focusing on the overall importance of English in the companies, the different English language situations, different aspects of language skills, and the language needs of the target companies in the past and the future. In the sixth section, the main findings are discussed in the light of the research questions and theoretical framework of the study. Additionally, the sixth section reviews the implications of the study for language education and discusses the validity and limitations of the study. Finally, the list of references and the interview structure in Finnish and English as appendices are provided at the end of the paper.
6