Patience and understanding

The past few weeks have been really busy and full of internationality. Our exchange students have arrived, and all together 20 nationalities are represented. What a mixture of cultures.. but all united with that curiosity and excitement of being in another country and getting to know a foreign culture. Some are very quiet and shy, others outgoing and already friends with everyone.

There are students from countries that I’ve never been to and whose representatives I’ve never met before. It will be interesting for me to learn about their cultures. I’m fascinated by the way our Chinese exchange students have English names for them selves to help us others with pronunciation and to remember their names. However, for example the Japanese exchange students do not do the same, nor do students from any other country, Personally I find it much more difficult to pronounce some of the European names (Belgian for example) due to the way we Finns pronounce the alphabet.

At the moment, with the mixture of cultures and everyone so exited with the beginning of their exchange, coping is taking patience and understanding from everyone. There are inaccuracies in both the messages we are communicating and the way we are communicating to each other, which is bringing about some misunderstandings. Also the expectations foreign exchange students have of Finland before their arrival do not always meet the reality (luckily sometimes the exchange students are positively surprised!). This can be very stressful and lead to a feeling of being let down. But it is all part of the experience. And it’s the way to generate and develop internationality competence.

This brings me to think of the qualities related to internationality competence in regards to communication. Or the kind of qualities that develop during the internationalisation process. These could be..

.. being neutral and equal towards everyone

.. empathy

.. ability to be flexible, to move on from a sudden change or drawback that bothers

.. politeness

.. being open minded

.. ..

Definitely not a inclusive list.

Now if I were to truly practise my reflective competence, I would analyse these qualities in myself, and ponder how I’ve developed them and what their state is. But.. it’s late and there’s another international day ahead tomorrow!

Back to the basics?

I’m a bit hesitant to bring up the language question again, but I feel it is quite an important question – and certainly an issue that has taken up quite a bit of my working time lately.. I called a few foreign students, and one of them said in the very beginning of the phone call (right after I had introduced myself and before I got to asked him about the reason I was calling) that he did not speak English. I was baffled, because he had been intending to come and study at Laurea in English. How could he study without understanding the language?

This got me thinking of the basics of internationality again. Is it about speaking English? Or just a foreign language? Finland is bilingual, meaning that we have two official languages, Finnish and Swedish (to learn the reasons, read about the history of Finland at http://www.finland.fi/History/). Being a native Finnish speaker myself, did my internationality start at third grade when I started to learn Swedish (a foreign language to me despite of it being the second domestic language of my country) or later, when I learned to communicate in English? Being able to read in English opens many of doors to new knowledge, especially in the internet. Being able to communicate in English brings about more possibilities for intercultural communication and experiences. My language skills in Swedish or Russian - not to mention the very basics of Spanish that I knew long time ago – do not give me as many possibilities as my English skills do. So is mastering English a perquisite for internationalisation?

…

No, not necessarily. For example, there are many foreigners that are able to communicate in Finnish, and one can learn a lot from each other and of a foreign culture. But it’s more limited that way. A practical example (yay!): my uncle, who cannot speak any other languages besides Finnish, has a foregn friend who can speak Finnish pretty well, so they get along well. To me the friend seemed a bit quiet, so when I told her that I could speak her native Russian, she really started speaking and telling me about her self. So language really does matter. For better and for worse - since this week so far I’ve been very limited due to the fact I could not offer any other languages for communication over the phone besides English..