Speaking German is paying off – First results of the LangBuCom-project

According to a recent study addressing language needs and use in Finnish companies, competence in German and especially plurilingual skills has become more important. The research project “Kielet kansainvälisessä yritysviestinnässä” / “Languages in international business communication” LangBuCom (Margit Breckle, University of Vaasa & Joachim Schlabach, University of Turku) collected responses from 272 respondents in Finnish companies with business contacts to German speaking countries, since these countries – and especially Germany – play a significant role for Finnish companies’ international business contacts.

According to the first results, almost all the respondents are plurilingual with four and more languages and most of them experience multilingual situations as completely normal. The importance of languages in the working context is changing: according to the respondents, the importance of English and German has increased during the past years and they anticipate that this trend will continue for the next years.

In the September issue of Kieli, koulutus ja yhteiskunta, we will present more results on language needs and more detailed results on language combinations as well as language use and challenges in multilingual situations in international business communication. These results can be used for further improvement of language and business communication courses and as background information for language policy.

For more information on the LangBuCom project, please contact:

Joachim Schlabach, joachim.schlabach(at)utu.fi
Margit Breckle, margit.breckle(at)uwasa.fi