Leuphana University Lüneburg - Institute of English Studies

Info

Welcome to the Institute of English Studies at Leuphana!

Please also visit our website at: http://www.leuphana.de/institute/ies.html

Geschichte

The Institute of English Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg consists of four main sections. Learn more about them below:

AREA STUDIES & SKILLS

In Area Studies we deal with theories and methods of area studies as well as with detailed aspects and structures of present societies in Anglophone countries. Seeking to get beyond traditional forms of information-only culture, our students are encouraged to engage fictional and non-fictional cultural texts, placing them in their historical, political, and cultural contexts from mainstream and marginalized perspectives. They learn to analyse and think critically about the impact culture has on communication, human behaviour, society, and identity construction. Moreover, we delve deeper into the multifaceted nature of culture, to cross borders of all kinds, and to learn about ourselves as cultural beings.

In the language skills classes, our students have the opportunity to perfect their language skills in a variety of settings and for a variety of purposes. They not only have the opportunity to review aspects of grammatical structures in selected contexts, but they can hone their presentation skills in English as well as get their feet wet through tandems or performance techniques. Also part of the program is English for Specific Purposes (ESP).In this vital area, we focus on learning about business ethics, communication, or negotiations. Finally, our students become familiar with the fundamentals of academic register and writing. They discover that academic and creative writing are not mutually exclusive, but more importantly we assist our students to develop their own writing style and mentor them on an individual basis.


LINGUISTICS

At the Chair of Linguistics, we study language in action and in interaction. Our work is empirical.The data underlying our research includes naturally occurring spoken and written data (frequently using electronic corpora) as well as laboratory data (e.g. questionnaires, roleplays, simulations, interviews, etc.).

Our aim in teaching is to facilitate students to experience linguistics not as a mere collection of facts but rather as a discipline of unanswered questions and exciting puzzles which students themselves may pursue in small/large-scale research projects within their studies.


LITERATURE

Literature can excite, puzzle, stimulate, entertain, question and delight. It introduces us to new perspectives, new cultures and new worlds of experience. We aim to embark on the journey, with our students, to discover these new worlds. We help them to explore a wide range of approaches to reading texts in order to develop the skills required of a critical and informed reader, the kind of reader we believe every future teacher or actor in the cultural domain wants to be. We are interested in how literature happens between and beyond the book covers, and explore it in project seminars, in cooperation with partners in local literary associations and institutions, in theatre excursions and guest lectures by renowned contemporary authors and translators.

Our research on and teaching of literatures in English, with special – but not exclusive – focus on British and Irish literature, covers a wide range of topics. These include comparative literature, image studies (the representation of cultural and ethnic identity in literature), children’s literature, picture books and other multi-media texts, translation studies, drama, autobiography, film and literature, literary nonsense, travel literature, and literature of the Romantic period. In our seminars, which also include introductory courses and lectures, we use a variety of didactic approaches, including e-learning, and we encourage students to critically assess our teaching. Leading international scholars regularly give guest lectures at our institute. We consider it paramount to share our research with our students and encourage them to develop their own research interests through to PhD level.


TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

In the TEFL (Teaching English as a Second Language) section we deal with a wide variety of issues concerning the teaching and learning of English in educational contexts, ranging from primary to secondary schools with an additional focus on English for professional purposes and in further education.

The section’s research and BA and MA courses study the different roles of teachers and learners in the English language classroom and the effect these roles have on learning processes. Our courses aim at providing future teachers with relevant theoretical concepts and methodological approaches. Therefore, students in our seminars critically analyse and design teaching materials. Current trends in standard-setting and curriculum design are also taken into consideration. The courses help to develop students' diagnostic competences through careful analyses of approaches to assessment, among them the European Language Portfolio.

Our research activities contribute to the Leuphana research cluster on "Diversity" and embrace not only traditional questions in the field of personal and affective factors, but also diversity in the social background of learners in order to foster intercultural competence. Our research and our teacher education courses analyze and practise ways of teaching English as a foreign language with respect to its literature and cultures.