TEFL guest lectures

Prof. Dr. Michael Meyer

Universit?t Koblenz-Landau

Communication and emotion in adolescent peer groups

14 January 2025, 10:15 - 11:45

Abstract: This workshop will briefly introduce you to multimodal communication in real life and in comics. Then, you will have the opportunity to work creatively with the American short comic about the sensitive topic of the first crush and peer group responses by Jim Hoover: “A relationship in 8 pages.” You may infer characters' thoughts from their body language, design speech bubbles with what they might have or should have said, or revise the ending in prose or multimodal panels. Finally, we will discuss the transfer to English classes at school.

Coping with jobs and idiots

14 January 2025, 12:15 - 13:45

Abstract: This workshop will briefly introduce you to multimodal communication in real life and in comics. Then, you will have the opportunity to work creatively with the Asian-American short comics by Adrian Tomine about coping with difficult job issues. Take the opportunity to design prequels and sequels of these comics in porse or in panels, for example about job interviews or alternative ways of dealing with toxic co-workers. Finally, we will discuss the transfer to English classes at school.

Michael Meyer's bio: Michael Meyer was Professor of Anglophone Literatures and TEFL at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Among his publications are articles, books, and collections on Early Modern Literature, Romantic literature, 20^th and 21^st-century British literature, Postcolonial literature, and Film Studies. He also wrote an introduction to English and American Literatures (4^th ed., 2011) and Teaching English (with Nancy Grimm and Laurenz Volkamm, 2^nd ed. 2022, print and audio-book). His current research focuses on postcolonial literature, multimodal media, and teaching literature.

PD Dr. Valentin Werner

Otto-Friedrich Universit?t Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Engl. Sprachwissenschaft einschl. Sprachgeschichte

21 October 2024, 9 - 9:45

Abstract: This talk will offer a brief introduction into the subfield of Learner Corpus Research (LCR), which can be viewed as an emerging discipline of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Research. LCR researchers compile digital collections of learner language production (interlanguage) and analyze them at various levels (e.g. pronunciation, grammar, errors). A second focus will lie on an ongoing LCR project called Young German Learner English (https://www.ygle.de), which focuses on the exploration of the SLA constructs Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency among EFL learners in secondary schools. This project has a strong practical concern and eventually aims at mapping the development of learner language over time, so that its data can eventually also be used to familiarize future EFL educators with learner features and supply material developers with information what learners know at various stages.

Gastvortrag im Rahmen der Diversity-Gastprofessur 

Dr. Marta Janachowska-Budych 

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland 

17 June 2024, 16:00 - 18:00

Nach den Angaben von UNICEF (2021) lag die Zahl der internationalen Migrant_innen im Jahre 2020 bei 281 Millionen – fast 13 Prozent von ihnen, 36 Millionen Menschen, waren unter 18 Jahre alt: Kinder und Jugendliche im schulpflichtigen Alter. Diese Zahlen verdeutlichen die immensen und vielschichtigen Auswirkungen der Migration auf die Gestaltung moderner Bildung, angefangen mit dem Recht dieser Kinder und Jugendlichen auf Repr?sentation und Einbeziehung in unterschiedliche nationale Bildungssysteme bis hin zu einem Unterricht, der die nationale, ethnische und sprachliche Heterogenit?t einer jeden Lernumgebung berücksichtigt. Dies betrifft auch das Lernen von Sprachen in und au?erhalb institutionalisierter Bildungskontexte, das unter den Bedingungen – und Folgen – einer migrierenden Weltbev?lkerung stattfindet. In dem Vortrag soll die Problematik des ?Hyperobjekts” (Thomas Morton) Migration, das u.a. die soziologische, p?dagogische und linguistische Forschung inspiriert, aus fremdsprachendidaktischer Perspektive untersucht werden. Konkret steht im Mittelpunkt des Interesses, welche Potentiale und Herausforderungen der Einsatz deutschsprachiger literarischer Texte zur Migration im Unterricht Deutsch als Fremdsprache bietet, wobei sowohl der theoretische Rahmen als auch praxisorientierte Beispiele auf andere Sprachkonstellationen und fremdsprachendidaktische Lernsetting übertragbar sind.  

Prof. Dr. Regina Kaplan-Rakowski

University of North Texas, USA

Workshop "Language Learning in High-Immsersion Virtual Reality"

3 June 2024