Comprehensive schools and university-preparatory secondary schools (B.A.)

Comprehensive schools and university-preparatory secondary schools (M.Ed.)

French Languages and Cultures (B.A.)

French Languages and Cultures (M.A.)

Description

Cultural Management (B.A.)

Cultural Management (M.A.)

All students are required to take a language assessment test at the beginning of their course. Language skills at level B1 of the CEFR are a prerequisite of admission to the course. By the time you graduate, you should have reached level C2 of the CEFR (near-native level) in all four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening), at least if you are training to become a teacher. Those who do not have the required language skills may take part in intensive courses at the IOS. An increased non-academic workload in the first semesters is to be expected in this case.

The school of linguistics is dedicated to the study of French and Spanish in the past and present. Topics include the evolution of the Romance languages from Latin, phonetics (the scientific description of pronunciation), questions of dialectology (how do regional varieties differ from each other?), questions of pragmatics (the ways language is affected by the situation in which it is used) and sociolinguistic questions (e.g. how do people speak in certain parts of the city? What language is used by politicians?)

Cultural studies examines all cultural manifestations in a language area, including art, music, and film in Spain, Hispano-America, France and the Francophone sphere. Literary studies, an area of academic study with a long tradition in Romance studies, deals with the specific form of reality modelling taking place in literary texts. Its focus might be on literary history or on the systematic study of certain genres or motifs, to name but two examples.

The foreign language teaching department is concerned with the teaching and learning processes of Romance languages. Among other things, this involves studying the difference between first, second and foreign language acquisition, questions of multilingualism and the development of language competencies in individual sub-skills (e.g. listening comprehension). In addition, students learn about a variety of cultural, literary and media didactic issues (e.g. inter- and transcultural learning). Finally, the department tries to give recommendations for (teaching) practice based on current research.