Background

The FinTandem project started at Vasa Arbis the autumn of 2002 thanks to the initiative of Professor Christer Laurén at the University of Vaasa. Vasa Arbis found the tandem method interesting because it could create a natural linguistic and cultural exchange between the Swedish and Finnish speakers in the region. In addition, FinTandem could create the opportunity for foreigners who had recently moved to Vaasa to get to know our languages and our culture, and vice versa.

Within the pilot project, Vasa Arbis chose to cooperate with the Adult Education Centre of Korsholm. Together the two adult education centres have developed material and standard practice for the FinTandem course. The adult education centres believe that the FinTandem project benefits from regional cooperation, as this gives greater possibilities to achieve a larger amount of participants and consequently makes it easier to find suitable FinTandem pairs.