Two and a half years ago, I got the spark to apply for a job at Promentor after seeing an article about the company in Talouselämä magazine. The company immediately caught my interest, as I see the use of digital learning materials as the future. Alongside online language courses, Promentor offers traditional classroom training for both companies and the public sector. For educational institutions, a selection of 45 courses is offered as the Edu Total package.
I work as a language training specialist at Promentor and teach Swedish myself to a few clients. I use Promentor Web language courses to support the training, from which we mainly do written exercises and tests. Online courses are ideal for that exact purpose, as the trainer doesn't have to search high and low across various textbooks and the internet for grammar and structure exercises suitable for the student's level.
Since trainees like to converse, I also utilize a lot of other materials in training, such as magazine articles related to the student's work, as well as Swedish news broadcasts and programs that we watch online. According to the student's wishes, in addition to professional matters, we discuss everything imaginable during lessons, such as the Finnish and global economy, current politics, and the Nordic, especially Swedish, societal model and culture. Often, the trainer receives material from the client company to help train professional vocabulary. Just the other day, I realized that good grief, I haven't used a standard textbook in language training for two years! Utilizing digital and authentic material is so natural nowadays that one doesn't even think about it. Unfortunately, in many companies and educational institutions, this is not yet the case.
Tiina Tanskanen-Kudjoi, trainer
tiina.tanskanen-kudjoi(at)promentor.fi
