Participation in the Seminar Series "Conducting Language Courses for Refugees: Reflection and Ideas"

The training seminar offered by the International DAAD Academy was originally scheduled to take place in Berlin in early April 2020. Due to the corona pandemic, it did not take place as an in-person event but rather as four webinars from May 26 to June 5, 2020.

The organizers provided a Moodle course room with a detailed survey on the contents of the training seminars. Three of the seminars were planned according to the participants’ responses to the survey. David Stops led the first event, "A Comparison of Video Conferencing Software: Reflection on and Tips for Synchronous Online Teaching." Stops compared the usefulness of the different providers for the classroom and gave tips on how to use them. Andreas Wiebel (Technical University of Berlin) conducted the second webinar, which dealt with the question, “To What Extent Are Preparatory Language Courses Really Preparatory?” Presenting the cases of three refugees, Wiebel illustrated the extent to which the evaluation of the participants’ ability to learn in a German course is limited. In “Critical Response and Describing Diagrams: Challenges of Exam Text Production,” the third webinar, Andreas Wiebel once again synthetized participants’ experiences and made recommendations on how to design lessons that prepare participants for the DSH text production section. Corina Maier ended the series with "Specialist Preparatory Language Courses for International Students: Focus on STEM." Ms. Maier provided participants with a comprehensive overview of the conceptual and theoretical background of subject-specific language teaching and detailed references. She presented a convincing concept for subject-specific teaching, which she helped to develop as coordinator at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

The organizers plan to provide a platform for exchange between all those involved beyond the scope of the webinar series. Weekly discussion prompts in the Moodle course room should serve to further discussion of the topic introduced in the webinars. 

Report: Anja Martin

Published 16 July 2020