Language practices in the work communities of Finnish Language Centres
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Hanna Kosonen
Abstract
Linguistic diversity is growing in Higher Education, driven by factors like internationalization and digitalization. This trend necessitates a reevaluation of language practices within academic communities. Language Centres play a crucial role in modelling effective practices and reshaping these practices to address the multilingual needs of university staff and students. This study explores how university Language Centre staff in Finland describe language practices within their work communities and examines the motives behind them. A Language Centre is an institution within a university focused on teaching and supporting language learning. Survey data from 95 staff members across all Finnish universities was analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings indicate positive correlations between the clarity of language practices, visibility of multilingualism, freedom of language choices, and staff satisfaction. However, challenges remain in maintaining clarity of such practices and satisfaction of the staff. The qualitative analysis identified six key motives for language choice: time-benefit ratio, national languages, communication certainty and emotions, accessibility and inclusion, lingua franca, and multilingualism. A constellation model is introduced to highlight the situational and dynamic interplay of these factors shaped by the surrounding space and the conception of language ownership. This study acknowledges the situational nature of community dynamics and stresses the importance of discussion to promote mutual understanding. Language issues extend beyond individual preferences to the community’s overall capacity for language awareness. The results of this research encourage Language Centre professionals to not only facilitate discussions on language practices as experts within their universities but also to actively reflect on these issues within their own communities.
Appendix 1: The questionnaire
The survey is presented here in English, but the original was in Finnish, Swedish, and English.
Survey on the language practices of Language Centres’ work communities
This is a survey on the Language Centre employees’ experiences of multilingualism and language practices in the workplace. Language practices refer to the ways in which people use languages as a means of expression. The answers will be used for research and will be saved anonymously. Answering the questionnaire is completely voluntary. You are welcome to answer the survey regardless of whether you are a permanent, temporary or hourly paid employee. The questionnaire is not prepared by the employer and responding to it does not affect the employment relationship. The questionnaire consists of two parts: statements and open questions. You can answer one or more questions in Finnish, Swedish or English. For questions and contacts: [email address]. Data protection notice attached.
Backgroud information [Open question with an empty answer field]
Which university’s Language Centre do you work at?
Does your work community have agreements outlining language principles (e.g. meeting practices or written documents)? If so, what kind?
Claims about language practices [Answer options under the statements:].
Strongly disagree
Somewhat disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Somewhat agree
Strongly agree
The language practices of the work community’s meetings and events are clear to me.
The multilingual nature of our staff is reflected in the everyday life of our workplace.
I can use the language I wish to use in the workplace.
I am satisfied with the language practices of our workplace.
Open questions related to language practices [Open question with an empty answer field].
Please feel free to share your thoughts about multilingualism and language practices in your workplace.
Which issues related to language choices do you think promote an equal, respectful, and open atmosphere in the work community?
Which issues related to language choices do you think weaken the equal, respectful, and open atmosphere in the work community?
How would you like the multilingualism of our staff to be reflected in the everyday life of our workplace?
Appendix 2: R-code for the Figure 1
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
# Read the data
data1 <- read.csv(“data.csv”, sep = “;”)
# Calculate mean and standard deviation for each variable
clarity_mean <- mean(data1$Clarity)
clarity_sd <- sd(data1$Clarity)
multilingualism_mean <- mean(data1$Multilingualism.visible)
multilingualism_sd <- sd(data1$Multilingualism.visible)
allowed_to_use_mean <- mean(data1$Allowed.to.use)
allowed_to_use_sd <- sd(data1$Allowed.to.use)
satisfaction_mean <- mean(data1$Satisfaction)
satisfaction_sd <- sd(data1$Satisfaction)
# Define the data frame and selected columns
vars <- c(“Clarity”, “Multilingualism.visible”, “Allowed.to.use”, “Satisfaction”)
# Muokkaa dataa pitkään muotoon ja laske frekvenssit
data_long <- data1 %>%
pivot_longer(cols = vars, names_to = “key”, values_to = “value”) %>%
group_by(key, value) %>%
summarise(frequency = n(), .groups = “drop”)
# Assign colors to different values
colors <- c(“1” = “red”, “2” = “orange”, “3” = “yellow”, “4” = “green”, “5” = “blue”)
# Create the plot
ggplot(data_long, aes(x = key, y = frequency, fill = factor(value))) +
geom_bar(stat = “identity”, position = “dodge”) +
geom_text(aes(label = frequency), position = position_dodge(width = 0.9), vjust = -0.5) +
scale_fill_manual(values = colors, name = “Responses”) +
facet_wrap(∼key, scales = “free”, labeller = label_parsed) +
labs(
x = “Variables”, y = “Number of responses”, title = “Distribution of responses, n = 95”, caption = “Clarity = The language practices of the work community’s meetings and events are clear to me.\nAllowed to use = I can use the language I wish to use in the workplace.\nMultilingualism visible = The multilingual nature of our staff is reflected in the everyday life of our workplace.\nSatisfaction = I am satisfied with the language practices of our workplace.”
) +
theme_minimal () +
ylim (0, max (data_long$frequency) * 1.1) +
geom_text(data = data.frame(key = c(“Clarity”, “Multilingualism.visible”, “Allowed.to.use”, “Satisfaction”), mean = c(clarity_mean, multilingualism_mean, allowed_to_use_mean, satisfaction_mean), sd = c(clarity_sd, multilingualism_sd, allowed_to_use_sd, satisfaction_sd)), aes(x = key, y = Inf, label = paste(“Mean:”, round(mean, 2), “\nSD:”, round(sd, 2))), vjust = 2, size = 3, inherit.aes = FALSE)
Librarys used in R-srudio
Wickham, Hadley 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer-Verlag New York.
Wickham, Hadley, Romain François, Lionel Henry, Kirill Müller & Davis Vaughan (2023). _dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation_. R package version 1.1.4. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr (accessed 10 May 2023)
Wickham Hadley, Davis Vaughan & Maximilian Girlich 2024. _tidyr: Tidy Messy Data_. R package version 1.3.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyr (accessed 10 May 2023)
Appendix 3: R-code of Kendall’s tau tests
I refer to variables 1 and 2 as placeholders for the respective variables in the dataset. Subsequently, I replaced variables 1 and 2 with the corresponding variables from the dataset and assessed the mutual correlations among all the following variables: Clarity, Visible multilingualism, Satisfaction, and Allowed to use.
# Calculate Kendall’s tau correlation coefficient
kendall_tau <- cor(data1$Variable1, data1$Variable2, method = “kendall”)
# Set the data and number of bootstrap iterations
data <- data1
B <- 10000
# Initialize vector to store correlation values
cor_values <- numeric(B)
# Perform bootstrap iterations
for (i in 1:B) {
# Generate bootstrap sample from the original data
boot_data <- data[sample(nrow(data), replace = TRUE), ]
# Calculate the correlation coefficient for the bootstrap sample
cor_values[i] <- cor(boot_data$Variable1, boot_data$Variable2, method = “k”)
}
# Calculate and print the lower and upper bounds of the confidence interval
sort(cor_values)[0.025*10000]
sort(cor_values)[0.975*10000]
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Integration, collaboration, friendship as core messages for younger generations
- Research Articles
- Research practice and culture in European universities’ Language Centres. Results of a survey in CercleS member institutions
- Language practices in the work communities of Finnish Language Centres
- Fostering transparency: a critical introduction of generative AI in students’ assignments
- Expert versus novice academic writing: a Multi-Dimensional analysis of professional and learner texts in different disciplines
- Raising language awareness to foster self-efficacy in pre-professional writers of English as a Foreign Language: a case study of Czech students of Electrical Engineering and Informatics
- Does an autonomising scheme contribute to changing university students’ representations of language learning?
- Investigating the relationship between self-regulated learning and language proficiency among EFL students in Vietnam
- Students’ perspectives on Facebook and Instagram ELT opportunities: a comparative study
- Designing a scenario-based learning framework for a university-level Arabic language course
- Washback effects of the Portuguese CAPLE exams from Chinese university students and teachers’ perspectives: a mixed-methods study
- Students’ perception of the impact of (meta)linguistic knowledge on learning German
- Language policy in Higher Education of Georgia
- Activity Reports
- Intercomprehension and collaborative learning to interact in a plurilingual academic environment
- Teaching presentation skills through popular science: an opportunity for a collaborative and transversal approach to ESP teaching
- Japanese kana alphabet retention through handwritten reflection cards
- Decolonising the curriculum in Japanese language education in the UK and Europe
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Integration, collaboration, friendship as core messages for younger generations
- Research Articles
- Research practice and culture in European universities’ Language Centres. Results of a survey in CercleS member institutions
- Language practices in the work communities of Finnish Language Centres
- Fostering transparency: a critical introduction of generative AI in students’ assignments
- Expert versus novice academic writing: a Multi-Dimensional analysis of professional and learner texts in different disciplines
- Raising language awareness to foster self-efficacy in pre-professional writers of English as a Foreign Language: a case study of Czech students of Electrical Engineering and Informatics
- Does an autonomising scheme contribute to changing university students’ representations of language learning?
- Investigating the relationship between self-regulated learning and language proficiency among EFL students in Vietnam
- Students’ perspectives on Facebook and Instagram ELT opportunities: a comparative study
- Designing a scenario-based learning framework for a university-level Arabic language course
- Washback effects of the Portuguese CAPLE exams from Chinese university students and teachers’ perspectives: a mixed-methods study
- Students’ perception of the impact of (meta)linguistic knowledge on learning German
- Language policy in Higher Education of Georgia
- Activity Reports
- Intercomprehension and collaborative learning to interact in a plurilingual academic environment
- Teaching presentation skills through popular science: an opportunity for a collaborative and transversal approach to ESP teaching
- Japanese kana alphabet retention through handwritten reflection cards
- Decolonising the curriculum in Japanese language education in the UK and Europe
