Suomipassi – Finnish Pass mobile application helps Finnish learners in everyday life

Suomipassi is a recently updated mobile application that helps Finnish learners practice phrases and words needed in everyday life. The goal of the app is to encourage learners to use Finnish more outside the classroom, while also motivating native Finnish speakers to use Finnish in service situations instead of English.

Suomipassi was first launched at the University of Turku in 2018. It has now been updated as part of the Centre for Language and Communication Studies (CeLCS) "Guiding Towards Fluent Finnish" (OSUS) project. The app's appearance is fresher, and the content has been expanded: the app now includes over 350 phrases and words. An important update in Suomipassi is that the entire content is recorded in spoken language, allowing learners to immediately hear authentic language. Suomipassi has 10 auxiliary languages, so even Finnish-speaking students can practice basic phrases in, for example, Swedish or English. However, the audio files are currently only in Finnish.

The concept behind Suomipassi is simple: the user listens to phrases, practices pronunciation, and then goes to, for example, a café to speak Finnish in real life. After speaking Finnish, the user can give themselves a stamp and see on the app's map all the places where they have spoken Finnish. This adds a gamification element to language use: how many stamps can I collect? In addition to the stamp, the user can give themselves a smiley and reflect on their learning. Stamps and smileys are visible in the learning diary. The user can also mark certain phrases as favorites and search for suitable phrases using the search function.

In spring 2025, CeLCS will organize a Suomipassi course where students will practice the app's phrases and visit places in the campus area or in nearby companies in order to practice speaking Finnish in real-life situations. The places have been contacted in advance, and they can choose if they want to use the Suomipassi badge, which signals to students that they can receive service in Finnish if they wish.

• It is extremely important that Finnish language students get positive experiences for speaking Finnish. When they succeed in communication, the threshold to use the language lowers, and through this, the sense of belonging and integration into the community gradually strengthens. Finnish does not have to be perfect to be used, says Suomipassi course teacher and Suomipassi developer Jenni Laine.

Suomipassi is the result of collaboration among many professionals at the University of Turku. The Finnish language teachers of the OSUS project created the content and provided a pedagogical perspective for the app, while the application developers from Research IT implemented the technical side of the app. Translations of phrases and editing of audio files involved CeLCS's language teachers, other staff, and students.

The content of Suomipassi is immediately available for free download from app stores.

Explore Suomipassi and download the app: https://suomipassi.utu.fi

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