Single course
English for Working Life
After taking the course, you will have learned to write texts related to your future profession in an appropriate style
Content
The central contents of the course are:
• telling about your studies and looking for employment
• oral and written communication in working life, for example meetings, small talk, customer service, telephoning and emailing, and expressing your own opinion
• producing formal text, such as reports, instructions or summaries
• field-specific terminology
• presentations, workshops, group discussions
Objectives
In the course English for Working Life you will learn to operate in English in situations related to international working life.
You will also increase your self-confidence in speaking and writing in professional contexts. In addition, you will learn to follow the developments in your field locally and globally.
After taking the course, you will have learned to write texts related to your future profession in an appropriate style. You will also have gained confidence in spoken interaction and acquired vocabulary that will benefit you later in your career.
Communication and Team-working: You are able to function in a national and international context and you are able to cooperate with specialists in your own field as well as with other groups of professionals.
Implementation methods
This is an online implementation (August 31 – December 13 2026) that is based on independent, yet guided and timetabled work in Moodle. Please read through the following course description carefully.
The course has an introductory webinar on ZOOM on Mon August 31 4.00 - 5.15 pm. After the start webinar, there will be four voluntary webinars that introduce the next study unit and the exam. All webinars are recorded and available in Moodle. The students are required to watch the recordings if they cannot attend the webinars.
The course is in five parts and is timetabled as follows:
- Unit 1: Introduction (August 31 – September 6)
- Unit 2: Studies and Opinions (September 7 – September 20)
- Unit 3: Job search and Working Life Communication (September 21 – October 4)
- Unit 4: Group Discussion (October 5 – October 25)
- Unit 5: My expertise (October 26 – November 15)
- Exam: weeks 47-50
You need to finish each part in the order given and by the deadline for the part. Note, passive students are deleted from the course after the first week of study.
The course includes several assignments that contribute to the final mark. You will have both written and oral learning assignments. The oral assignments are videos. There are also group assignments (two on a discussion forum, one live online) and a written exam. You can sit the exam either at Rajakatu campus or in an EXAM Studio during weeks 47-50. Not following the instructions and schedule lowers the mark and thus, most likely, the course grade.
The topics of the course are as follows:
- studies and job search
- communication in working life, for example, e-mails, opinions, group discussions
- professional writing
- field-specific terminology
- professional presentations
Online courses are recommended for students who have strong English skills, and who are able to use English in their everyday lives, as the course does not provide a similar English-speaking environment that the classroom on a contact implementation creates. You also need good time-management skills, basic computing skills, web camera and microphone. Note that according to degree regulations, on online implementations, priority is given to part-time students (=monimuoto) and students in their final phase of studies.
The level of this course is B2 (https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/sites/default/files/cefr-fi.pdf), which is upper-intermediate level. The course is conducted fully in English.
LEARNING MATERIAL
The teacher's material will be used in the course. The material is available in Moodle and additional support material can be provided if needed.
EXAM
The written exam can be completed either in an EXAM Studio during weeks 47-50 (by Dec. 13), or in a classroom at Rajakatu campus. The course includes two re-sit opportunities:
- Re-sit 1: by January 31 2027
- Re-sit 2: by February 28 2027
WORKLOAD
The estimated student workload in this course is as follows:
- Start webinar and info videos: 5 hours
- Familiarization with online course environment, self-study and learning assignments: 70-80 hours
- Group discussions: 5 hours
- Preparation for the exam: 5-10 hours
Total 108 hours (ca. 7 hours of work/week)
EVALUATION
Besides the exam, the course includes several assignments that contribute to the course grade. Not following the instructions and schedule lowers the mark and thus, most likely, the course grade.
Prerequisites
The course is on level B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. If the course Improve your English was recommended to you at the beginning of your studies, please take it before enrolling for English for Working Life.
In this course you will need the basic ICT-skills, such as word processing and creating audio and video files.
Additional information
The teaching language is English.
The course code is ZZ00CD00-3130. Use the code to view the course schedule at https://lukkarit.peppi.jamk.fi.
Enrolling on open studies requires a Finnish personal identity number and strong identification.
Make a strong identification in the suomi.fi service or with HAKA credentials when You do the enrollment. Otherwise, you will need either a valid passport or an EU ID card with a chip (according to the ICAO 9303 E-MRTD standard). In this case, please contact help.jamk.fi
Please notice, that degree students in Jamk who have enrolled for attendance in are not eligible to enrol as Jamk Open UAS students (instead enrollment in Peppi).
Read more about enrollment and study fees: https://www.jamk.fi/en/apply-to-jamk/jamk-open-university-of-applied-sc…
Further Information concerning the enrollment: avoinamk@jamk.fi