Let’s talk about YKI
The event “Trò chuyện về YKI” (Let’s talk about YKI) was successfully hosted by VPF in May 2022. The event aimed to provide helpful tips and insights about the YKI test in Finnish and Swedish.
We had the pleasure of inviting our 3 guests, Thu Anh Nguyen, My Linh Nguyen, and Tri Tran, to share their personal experiences leading to the success of their YKI tests. They provided us with not only their learning tips and materials but also the inspiration to continue learning the language even after the test.
Content highlight:
Thu Anh Nguyen, who passed the YKI test while working full time in 2020, now administers “Finnish YKI Test 2021” Facebook group with more than 6000 members, shared her tips on learning to pass the Finnish YKI test:
Most people passed Reading skills and agreed that grammar is not a vital factor for the test. Meanwhile, examinees selected speaking & listening skills as the more difficult-to-pass sectors. Thu Anh shared that the most effective way to practice is to keep talking in Finnish even if you’re not 100% confident. Simple tasks such as asking for clothing sizes in the store can help tremendously with your speaking skills. She also suggested focusing on the vocabulary of the 7 topics that are usually discussed in the Speaking/Writing test, while learning readymade answers for different topics. Practice every day, even with a small exercise can still help in the long run.
One helpful tip from Thu Anh is that you can just focus on passing one skill for one test as the Finnish Migration Office allows you to combine two test results when applying for citizenship (1). Doing this can lessen the stress and buy you more time to learn the needed skill.
My Linh Nguyen, our second speaker, who passed Swedish YKI test in 2020 also shared her learning journey and useful tips for the test:
To learn Swedish, My Linh introduced courses from universities (Arcada, Hanken), Arbis, private tutors, or self-study on Swedishpod101. She also suggested her learning methods for different skills, for example: learning new vocabulary using the Anki app on your phone, reading materials from the Rivstart books and exercises from Kotisuomessa, etc. She emphasized the importance of continuous practice in all skills to achieve the best result.
The Swedish YKI test is not held as often as Finnish YKI test, therefore, seats fill up quickly in big cities like Helsinki. She advised test takers to be proactive to register, so as to avoid unnecessary stress of having to travel to other cities to sit for the exam. Speaking test requires intense focus as everyone in the test room starts speaking at the same time and the headphone is not noise-canceling. Another tip from My Linh is to be simple, yet as certain as possible by using the grammatically familiar structures.
Tri Tran, who passed YKI tests in both Finnish and Swedish languages with flying colors, shared his insights into learning the two languages and highlighted the differences in learning them.
From his own experience, Tri commented that Finnish can be difficult to learn at first but it will get easier when you get to the B2 level, while Swedish is the opposite. He also highlighted the importance of your personal preference when choosing which language to learn, as it highly depends on your surroundings, your learning purposes, your language learning journey previously, etc.
Tri agreed with Thu Anh and My Linh that speaking to the locals is the fastest way to practice your speaking skills. You can ask your friends to talk in Finnish/Swedish while you answer in English and then slowly level up your skills until you have no problem switching between languages. If you don’t have any native friends, try using other resources such as Cafe Lingua, Luckan, sports meetup, etc. to practice.
Download all resources and materials shared by our 3 guests here! (PDF File)
VPF would like to send our greatest thank you to our three amazing guests for their contribution to the success of the event. VPF hopes this event has brought helpful tips & insights and learning motivation to those who are planning to take the YKI test or to start learning these languages soon.
This is the first event in our Skill Booster series. Please stay tuned for more exciting events from VPF in the future!
Reference: (1) https://migri.fi/en/national-certificate-of-language-proficiency-yki-
