2018-2019: The mobile app and collaboration with Study in Turku
In the spring of 2018, the next phase of the Suomipassi began as part of the Study in Turku collaboration. The idea to transform the Suomipassi into a mobile app came from a student: it would be much easier to carry around! The Suomipassi and the Study in Turku collaboration fit perfectly together: both aim to provide international students with the keys to a smooth and successful everyday life and to make students feel that Turku is a great place to live and study. When a student who has just arrived in Finland has such a concrete tool to support their Finnish language learning, the threshold for using the language is lowered. The app is a digital tool and motivator, but it is important to remember that it does not replace systematic and long-term language skill development.
At the beginning of the project, the content, i.e., the phrases, were created and modified based on student feedback. The mobile app contained significantly more phrases than the printed passport, including, for example, food vocabulary and numbers. Initially, the passport was intended to be only in Finnish, Swedish, and English, but active Finnish language students wanted to participate in the project and translated the phrases into Chinese, Russian, German, and Spanish as well. It was wonderful to see how enthusiastically the students joined the project! To help with pronunciation practice, the phrases were also recorded. In the mobile app, stamps are not requested from the staff; instead, they are self-marked: when a student has spoken Finnish, they can mark the phrase as completed. Later, the student can see on the app’s map where they have spoken Finnish.
The mobile app was launched in the fall of 2018 and was updated in the spring of 2019 with new phrases and new languages: Italian, Arabic, French, and colloquial Finnish. Additionally, a phrase search function and illustrative info images on how to use the app were introduced.