ECTS - Teaching specialisation

Teaching atmosphere

The Department's over-arching objective is to contribute to the development of the individual student as well as the intercultural understanding of a sustainable society. Through research and teaching, staff and students are devoted to generating knowledge and developing policies, techniques, and skills to contribute to the development of international communication and respect for different cultures. We believe this is best accomplished through the joining of multiple backgrounds and interdisciplinary approaches in a creative personal working atmosphere.

We try to work in small classes as far as possible to leave enough room for discussion and personal preferences. Our teaching is research-lead from an early stage onward. We employ student assistants to help construct web pages for English learners world-wide, to analyse East African texts and to compare the web marketing of Lufthansa and Thai Air. Our research activities take place in varied settings, in and around Saxony, Scotland, Africa and South East Asia, and we involve diverse partners at universities and other institutions. Our students have contributed enormously to small projects which may be useful as well as entertaining.

At least week, members of the department meet with students in the English Club.

Research-led teaching

• Current projects:
  • The Lampeter Corpus: Early Modern English Language and Culture on CD ROM
  • The International Corpus of English: East Africa on CD
  • Multicultural Societies: Problems and perspectives
  • Localisation in Globalisation: Adaptation of the world language English to different cultural contexts
  • TechPresent: A virtual model for writing scientific technical texts in English
  • An Internet Grammar of English
  • Further Education & Training of English Teachers in Saxony
  • Literature and the New Media: Multimedia approaches to literature
  • Language Learning and Computers
  
  
• Past projects:
  • Hyperfiction: Literature on the Internet
  • English in Saxony: Needs and supply
  • National / Regional Identities in Britain

Lectures and seminars offered regularly

• Overview
  • History of the English language
  • Sociolinguistics and SPSS research methodology
  • English around the world
  • Contrastive linguistics German - English
  • Second language acquisition
  • Applied linguistics
  
  
• Modern media
  • English and the internet
  • Newspapers and radio around the world
  • The language of tourism
  • The language of international politics
  
  
• Current research methology
  • Corpus-linguistics
  • SPSS
  • Text interpretation