perjantai 18. joulukuuta 2015

Slush – start-ups, networking and the time of my life


When I heard about Slush for the first time, I decided right away that someday I’d be a part of that out of this world like event. Slush is a non-profit event basically for start-ups and investors to meet each other. Other visitors can discuss about their business ideas, share their thoughts and what’s most important: make connections to business world and network. The event was like a tiny magical world of its own with special atmosphere.

Nowadays the importance of networking has become more and more crucial. No one can do everything by oneself. Making new contacts and building one’s social network is nearly a condition to make it in today’s business world. Coping with constant change and never ending battle against ever-growing need to work harder. Multitasking might be an admirable feature for someone but for me it means that when multitasking one can’t do anything properly.

In Slush I was one of the 1,500 volunteers and a part of the sustainability team. My job was to take care of sustainability during the event. I also managed to see some of the inspiring events, to hear innovative pitches and make few valuable connections. My language skills played an irreplaceable role while enjoying all the magical things Slush had to offer. All speeches were held in English and most of the participants spoke some other language than Finnish. Also during my first touch to Slush, which was a video interview, I had to speak English and be convincing at the same time – what a challenge! All in all this was an amazing and valuable experience for me. Experience Slush as a volunteer made possible for me to see much, much more compared to a “regular guest”.

What the future holds for us? Is it possible to make it on your own? What we can learn from all the success stories from the past is that the key factor to becoming successful is to learn how to ask for help. It’s not a sign of weakness to accept the truth and say: ‘Could you give me a hand with this?’

For here to eternity the main point in surviving through life is to gather around you people who are willing to help you to navigate through every obstacle life has to offer. To help you in this mission there are all sorts of events like Slush. So, open your mind – someone might need especially your help.

Text by Jenni Lunttila, a student of Independent Study in English course

tiistai 15. joulukuuta 2015

Learning a foreign language




Roughly fifteen years ago 3rd grade students in middle school were asked to pick a foreign language to study. Most of them, me included, picked English as their first foreign language but some picked German, French, Russian or some other language. Two years later the students had the option to choose another foreign language and some of the students who had picked English, picked some other language to study while the rest didn't. Then those who hadn't picked English as their first foreign language, most of them picked English this time. But there were some students who didn't pick English as their first or second foreign language.
English is not a mandatory language in Finland and even though over 99% of the students pick English at some point, there still are some people who don't pick it. But not learning English in school doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to be bad at it. English is recognized as a world language and almost everyone living in a welfare state sees and hears it every day. So even if it isn't learned at school, you can still learn it through everyday activities. Sadly the reverse is true as well. Even if you are taught at school, you still might not learn the language. Knowing English in modern world is probably one of the most important things. It helps if and when you meet foreign people even if your language skills aren't excellent. I'm sure that we all know someone who thinks they are better in English than they really are. Then there are those who just don't even try to learn or speak the language. Personally I appreciate people who, even though might not be the greatest at it, at least try their best (a good example: a japanese metal band Galneryus, just listen to their song ”In the cage” and try to figure out the lyrics without looking them up. They might not have the best pronunciation but they still try their best).
This Finland's situtation got me thinking how is it in other countries. Do native English speaking countries need to learn a foreign language? And what about other countries in Europe for example? Is it a culturar thing to learn English as the go-to foreign language or does other countries learn more other languages?
Learning a foreign language in Europe is mandatory almost in every country. Only Ireland and Scotland are exceptions to this. According to Eurostat in 2013, roughly 77% of primary school students in EU learn English as a foreign language and from upper secondary students over 94% students learn English, so you should be able to survive with just English in most of the countries if you were to go on a vacation. The latest students start learning a foreign language is by the age of 11 and that is in the UK. In Belgium they start the earliest, by the age of 3. Even in the UK where English is the native language, the students still learn a new language. But how about another English native country, the U.S.?
In the U.S. there is no nationwide mandate to learn a foreign language. Some high schools require the students to learn a new language but that means they start learning at the age of 14. Considering that U.S. considers itself as a multiculturar nation, it is baffling that they aren't required to learn any foreign languages. Not all schools even provide the option to teach a foreign language. Peronally I'm not all that surprised at this but that is another issue. Considering these facts, I feel pretty good about our education system. Comparing Europe to U.S. just by having people to learn foreign languages, europeans already have a better standing in the world. Learning a new language is a valuable skill and really useful as well. 
Text by Jiri Musto, a student of Independent Study in English course

Poetry: The art to connect languages with their cultures




                      My history with poetry started eleven years ago. My Portuguese literature professor aimed students to learn and tried to write their own papers. The topic was “dreams, difficulties and passion”, in a free translation from Portuguese. I took the third place and since then I never stopped to write. During my high school exchange program to United Stated I wrote my first poetry in English, it was an epitaph, and I got the first place on that contest. Back then I was already fifteen years old and I had more than one hundred pages written.
                      Stories of love, sadness, loneliness and so on. Poetry is the most simple and beautiful way that human beings can share their thoughts, histories and feelings. Since Camões, first world well-known Portuguese writer, and Shakespeare, and even before with Homer and his Iliad and Odyssey, we use the beauty of words to share with the eternity what we believe it is valuable for everyone. It is impossible to live in a world without poetry because it would led us to no real expression of own believes and mitigate how we understand each human being behavior. Also, the influence and correlation that poetry and music shows merge them to a unique way to transform written words into powerful songs and melodies.
                      Latin languages, such as Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, have an extra feeling when they are expressed. This difference to English is possible to see in several poetries and papers. Even though, some poems written in English language are delightful and brilliant, they express more a cold and less intensive way to share feelings that are in the roots of their culture. However, Latin culture has its passion express not only in words, but in their body language, ways to demonstrate feelings and how they aim to live their lives. This passion is even clearer in some cities that have poetry in their streets and building, such as Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Lisbon and many others.
                      I would like to terminate this post with a short line from a poem I wrote few years ago. It is written in English, but I believe is possible to feel my brazilian passion. I hope to share more poems in the near future. Enjoy it!
“Always leave an open door for life,
It has for you more than you can dream,
Time do not bring you answers or solutions,
It only shows the truth that was there since the first moment,
You cannot be blind because with time tears will be stronger and more painful,
Well, you need to learn how to love yourself as fast as possible…”

Text by Jose Mendez, a student of Independent Study in English course

sunnuntai 13. joulukuuta 2015

How to Improve Students’ Learning in LUT - Faults of the current system




Have you ever thought about how inefficient it is to wake up at seven o'clock in the morning and try to drag your tired body into the lecture hall? And just to listen the teacher speaking about some fancy stuff that is not going to be asked in an exam. After all the grades are  most students’ motivator to study. Well, you're not probably the only one. In fact, there is no research that this "sitting and listening" learning method is in any way a best method  to get people more educated. So why do we still do that? We need a change. For example I’ve found online lessons and tasks very efficient learning method but there is still quite limited amount of online courses especially in the field of economics. Thumbs up for LUT for making a major progress in this.

Few points about the group tasks. In my first year in Lappeenranta we made several group tasks for example in marketing  but there is something that really bothered me afterwards. That is the division of work. Usually, you study your own part of the work quite well but the parts your team members do are mostly forgotten. So if we have four students in one group task, each student learns a whopping 25 percent of the entire work. At least that's my personal experience of the group working. Of course the benefits of the group working is the problem solving together and the interactivity between students but something has to be done differently. Maybe we could force the students to study the entire subject of the work by adding some kind of test to the end of the group task. For example the teacher could interview the group personally about the subject and the project in general. I do not know would it make a difference but it’s worth trying.

I agree that we need to get rid of the examinations in our schools in Finland as LUT is currently doing. We need to make our study more independent of time and place and it is good that LUT has taken it to one of its goals. If we really want to improve our education system we need to approach learning in more scientific way. It is proven for example that interaction between people, playing in school during breaks and exercising develops brain more than "sitting and listening” because only a few people can concentrate on listening for a long period of time. It is also said that sitting and listening bores people especially younger children which causes anxiety which causes stress in the body which is a major factor in many diseases and disorders. There is just no point to  study to forget. We need to take advantage of our modern information-based technology and move to the new era. We need to gather smart and influential people to really discuss and refine our society and build a new kind of learning environment which is based on scientific facts. Main goal is to harvest the real potential and creativity of human beings. Here is an interesting video about school and creativity for the final lightening: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

Text by Samuli Heikkilä, a student of Independent Study in English course