Admit it: Most of us spend hours staring at a screen on a daily basis. Even if we’re just reading the news on our mobile phone, browsing Facebook for a few minutes or watching two or three episodes of our favourite series on Netflix, we are consuming multiple hours of screen time each week. Social media makes up most of this time, but luckily, it’s possible to take advantage of it. Many social media platforms are available globally, which means…
I bet you’ve encountered articles and funny pictures on social media concerning ‘difficult’ languages which appear impossible to learn. Languages with no prepositions (e.g. Finnish, Estonian) are often considered difficult. Tonal languages, languages in which stress and pitch change the meaning of a word (e.g. Chinese, Japanese), languages with many strict rules (e.g. German) or languages with a completely different alphabet (e.g. Russian) are also regarded as being difficult. But the truth is that no language is too difficult to…
Have you ever thought about where all this undefined amount of time between obligations and free-time activities goes? Time is money, now maybe more than ever. Our days are filled with important (and less important) activities. Smartphones in particular are with us everywhere. A tablet is easier to pick up than a book, and computers are constantly in standby mode. Smart devices are here to stay, but every one of us can decide how to use them in a smart…
You bought a language course and started your studies with great enthusiasm. Then came that super busy week at work, then the bathroom renovation, and then your child came down with fever. And in that hassle called everyday life you just couldn’t find time to continue with your studies. Sound familiar? In this newsletter, we will give you some tips on how to keep up your motivation and find time for language studies even during busy times. 1. Set a…
Finnish universities have a mandatory Swedish course that everyone has to pass in order to graduate. While Finns do study Swedish in school, the mandatory Swedish course in the university still causes a lot of headache, especially for the engineering students. Only a fraction of them get through the mandatory course without remedial teaching, and in the worst cases, failing to complete that one course delays their graduation. When the 25-year-old mechanic Mika Lamminen started his studies at the Tampere…
Eetu Laamanen, 26, started judo among other sports when he was a child. He decided to concentrate on judo when he started a sports high school. Judo seemed to be the most fitting sport to him, he had had some success in it, and compared with other sports, judo is multifaceted. “In judo I have needed all my skills. Practicing includes many things, not for example only strength or stamina, but a little bit of all aspects. It makes me…
