Language Practice Team
The English Department's Language Practice Team is comprised of language teachers from England, Scotland, Germany, the United States, and Canada. Our diverse backgrounds allow students in our department to experience a variety of English accents and gain cultural knowledge from a multitude of perspectives.
Guide to Improving Your English
Here is a guide to help you improve your English. It has been put together by the Language Practice Team of the Anglophone Studies Department and offers tips and suggestions for working on the following areas: grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, speaking, and writing.
Mastering a foreign language requires time and effort, but following this advice will definitely help you to get better at English.
Teaching Staff
Dr. Susan Dostert-Zickel
Born in London (UK), Susan gradually moved further South West with her family and spent her teenage years in Cornwall. Interested in languages from an early age, she decided to take a gap year after school and came to Germany as an au-pair.
Mair Edmunds-Harrington
Mair was born in Wales and brought up in Scotland. At the age of sixteen, she worked as an au-pair in Hamburg before starting her studies in French and German at the University of Glasgow. During her studies she taught English at summer schools in Edingburgh, Durham and Hamburg.
Christian Hunt
Christian Hunt was born and raised in a mill town in North Carolina. The mill has been closed, but the town is still called Kannapolis ('city of the looms'). He attended Davidson College, twenty minutes down the road, and graduated with a B.A.'s in English and German in 2000.
Dr. Astrid Klooth
Astrid Klooth finished her first state exam in English and French in 1994 and her second one in Mainz while working as a trainee teacher at a girls' grammar school. She then became a lecturer of technical and business English for various organizations, including the German Armed Forces.
Dr. Steve Maksymiuk
Steve Maksymiuk was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was in Edmonton that he completed his schooling and first degree, graduating from high school in 1980 and from the University of Alberta with a B.A. in 1984.
Tracy Meintrup-Cooper
Date of Birth: 21.07.1975, Nottingham, England After graduating in German, French and Russian from Keele University, England in 1999, Tracey Meintrup-Cooper spent seven years teaching English as a foreign language in Germany.
Stuart Milne
A native of Aberdeenshire in Scotland's Northeast, Stuart is now living in his tenth country in as many years. While he only moved to the Ruhrgebiet in the spring of 2018, he has fond memories of visiting the Christmas markets in Düsseldorf while attending secondary school in the Netherlands.
Adam von Wald
Adam von Wald grew up in Rochester Hills, Michigan. After completing his undergraduate degree in German and economics at Michigan State University, he completed his Master's in American Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has been teaching in the department ever since.