Sprachenwahl und Sprachkenntnisse zukünftiger Ökonomen in Finnland: Am Beispiel der Hanken School of Economics in Vaasa

This paper deals with language choice in terms of languages other than English and language skills of future economists at the Hanken School of Economics in Vaasa/Finland. German is the most frequently chosen language, followed by Spanish. With focus on German, it is investigated (i) how the future economists assess their own German skills, (ii) what objective language skills they have in German and (iii) what the relationship is between objective German skills and length of previous German language instruction. The paper shows that at the beginning of their studies at the Hanken School of Economics in Vaasa, the future economists attest themselves “no” to “very good knowledge” of German. The objective German language skills, measured by the C-test-based onSET Deutsch, typically increase from course level to course level. However, there is quite a large variation within each of the course levels German I, German II and German III. There is a tendency for objective German language skills to improve with the length of previous German language instruction. Nevertheless, it is possible that individual future economists achieve a better global language competence in German after two years of previous German language instruction than others after eight or nine years.