Browsing by Author "Ramula, Laura"

As a consequence of globalization, higher education institutions are becoming increasingly multilingual. Linguistic superdiversity is apparent within our communities, and education should view multilingualism as a valuable resource (Källkvist & Hult, 2020). Prior research has suggested that language barriers may pose issues for the inclusiveness of international students within higher education institutions (e.g., Xiao, 2021). One issue that the University of Helsinki is currently combating is finding language policies that successfully attain linguistic inclusion of all students within the university community. This is because the university has a role in both safeguarding the national languages of Finland (Finnish and Swedish) whilst also ensuring that the quality of education remains the same for non-Finnish/Swedish-speaking students. This study examines the issue from the perspective of 6 non-Finnish/Swedish-speaking students, who were interviewed about how they have experienced linguistic inclusion at the University of Helsinki. Linguistic inclusion, in this study, refers to language-related processes aiming for inclusiveness. To limit the scope of the research, students had to be first year master’s students, ensuring that they had on-going courses to share experiences from, but also prior university experience to compare to. The students reported that although their overall experience at the University of Helsinki has been inclusive, they have some suggestions based on their experiences to improving inclusiveness through language practices for international university students. Especially in matters relating to their education, the students reported that they would like information to be provided in English as a lingua franca. In more social contexts, such as attending events, the students do accept and even appreciate more translingual practices, as this allows students to become more included within the Finnish/Swedish-speaking communities. The University Student Union (HYY) is currently in the process of planning a new language strategy for 2023, for which the findings of this paper can provide some recommendations. The main feedback for HYY that the study provides is that all necessary information and training would be provided in all three languages and at least also in English, so international students working in organizations under HYY still have the same access to information as their Finnish/Swedish-speaking equivalents. The study still leaves some questions for future research to respond to, such as: what the main difficulties are in maintaining trilingual communication, how to balance between the responsibility of the institution and the student, and examining non-linguistic factors contributing to students’ experiences of inclusiveness.