Study with me in Helsinki

I teach Finnish in Helsinki and online, mainly private lessons but also at Helsingin työväenopisto, which is a non profit adult education institute funded mainly by anyone who pays their taxes to Finland. Organizing a course in Helsinki costs a few thousand euros depending on things like the length of the course, how many people are attending, the venue, the study materials, the teacher's salary and how much VAT you need to pay, so for profit private courses can get pretty expensive for the student. However, at Helsingin työväenopisto you can do a semester long course, twice a week, for 47 euros, and a four week course for as little as 8 euros. We have a variety of Finnish courses for different levels as well as many other languages, philosophy, cooking, yoga, music and art history, just to name a few. So if you're in Helsinki, be sure to sign up! 

I have four courses coming up this autumn:

Suomi 2: Finnish for those who already know the very basics
This group started from 0 with me in September 2017. We've covered all of Suomen mestari 1 so far and will be doing chapters 1 to 4 from Suomen mestari 2 this autumn. The group has evolved along the way, with lots of new faces in January, so don't worry if you weren't there last year! There will be lots of communicative exercises as well as music and movement to help you learn, and as with me always, a focus on speaking and spoken language, pronunciation, intonation and rhythm. But of course we'll also be digging into writing, reading comprehension and grammar. 

Place: Opistotalo, Helsinginkatu 26, room 405
Time: Tuesdays from 16.45 to 19.15 and Thursdays from 16.45 to 18.15

Suomi 4: Intermediate Finnish
This is a brand new group for me, and our starting level will be B1.2. At B1.2, you're able to communicate quite fluently in basic situations, like buying a coffee, having a simple one on one conversation in Finnish or writing a simple e-mail in Finnish. Following a rapid conversation between native speakers may still be really confusing, but you should be able to catch words and phrases here and there and make educated guesses about what's going on. Same goes for reading a newspaper - you might not understand everything yet, but your guesses about what the article is about are usually right. The news in simple Finnish, Selkouutiset, is quite easy to understand at this point. You're also able to do some more complex stuff, like expressing your opinion in Finnish in both written and spoken contexts. You might still make lots of mistakes and have complete blackouts every now and then, but you can usually make yourself understood.

In this course, we'll be covering chapters 1-4 from Suomen mestari 4. We'll be looking at the more advanced grammar structures found in written Finnish as well as diving more deeply into spoken Finnish. As we'll only be meeting once a week and covering quite a lot, make sure you have time to study at home, to do a lot of homework and to practice your Finnish regularly. 

Place: Opistotalo, Helsinginkatu 26, room 405
Time: Thursdays 18.30-21.00

Suomen kielen ääntämiskurssi: Finnish pronunciation
These are two mini courses that I'm especially happy about, which will be pretty much identical in content. But you're very welcome to attend both if you really want to practice your pronunciation and don't mind repeating some of the same exercises!

In four two hour sessions, we'll be covering the basics of Finnish pronunciation: intonation (also known as the melody of speech), rhythm, vowels, consonants and combinations of sounds, especially diphthongs (ie, ei, äi, iä, ou, uo, öy, yö...). There will be lots of exercises to to both in class and at home. We'll also be doing a lot of listening to help you with your listening comprehension. No prior knowledge of Finnish needed, but I'm hoping to make this a very useful course for anyone struggling with pronunciation or listening comprehesion, regardless of level. We'll also be using music and movement to help you learn as efficiently as possible. 

Place: Opistotalo, Helsinginkatu 26, room 405 (we'll also be using the language studio, room 316)
Time:
The first course will be on Tuesdays from 15.00 to 16.30 starting on the 11th of September.
The second course will be on Tuesdays from 13.00 to 14.30 starting on the 30th of October

Enrollment begins on the 17th of August at 11 am, and you can find more info about all my courses at Työväenopisto here at ilmonet. Hope to see you in my classes in September! 

Picture by arunas68