TEFL guest lectures

Prof. Dr. Michael Meyer

University of 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

University of Bamberg, Chair of English Linguistics

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.

This guest lecture was held in German as a part of the diversity guest professorship.

Dr. Marta Janachowska-Budych 

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland 

17 June 2024, 4 - 6 pm

According to UNICEF (2021), the number of international migrants in 2020 was 281 million – almost 13% of them, 36 million people, were under the age of 18: children and young people of school age. These statistics illustrate the immense and complex impact of migration on the design of modern education, from the right of these children and young people to representation and inclusion in different national education systems to teaching that takes the national, ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity of each learning environment into account. This also applies to language learning in and outside institutionalised educational contexts, which takes place under the conditions – and consequences – of a migrating world population. In the lecture, the problem of the "hyperobject" (Thomas Morton) migration, which inspires sociological, pedagogical and linguistic research, among others, will be examined from a foreign language didactic perspective. Specifically, the focus of interest will be on the potentials and challenges of using German-language literary texts on migration in the teaching of German as a foreign language, whereby both the theoretical framework and practice-oriented examples can be transferred to other language constellations and foreign language didactic learning settings.  

See below for the German poster:

Prof. Dr. Regina Kaplan-Rakowski

University of North Texas, USA

Workshop "Language Learning in High-Immsersion Virtual Reality"

3 June 2024

This guest lecture was held in German and focussed on how the platform "Mebis" can be used more efficiently.

See below for the German poster: