March 19, 2014
On the afternoon of March 9, Prof. Ulrich Steinmüller from Institute of language and communication, Technical University of Berlin, the former dean of SIS, visited Institute of German Studies (IGS) and delivered a lecture titled “The New Trend of German as a Foreign Language”. The lecture appealed to many teachers and postgraduates of IGS, including Prof. FAN Jieping, Prof. LI Yuan, Associated Prof. LU Shen, and Lecturer SHAO Yong.
The lecture was hosted by Prof. FAN, who is the student of Prof. Steinmüller. He firstly gave a brief review and introduction of 30-year friendly relations between Technical University of Berlin and IGS of Zhejiang University, and hoped that the cooperation would deepen and prosper in future academic communication.
Prof. Steinmüller then proceeded with a summary and an outlook of the international master dual-degree program and joint cultivation of Ph.D candidates, which posed the question of why German should be learned as a foreign language. He pointed out that nowadays it became more and more important to master a foreign language besides English which is commonly used around the world. German now plays a more essential role in enterprises and companies as a criterion of an applicant’s quality. Except for communicative German, our German teaching should be extended to academic German, professional German and other practical aspects as well, in order to help foreign students with different academic backgrounds to lessen language difficulties during study in Germany. Taking the above reasons into consideration, Technical University of Berlin pays close attention to professional German teaching in the studies of German as a foreign language with its intrinsic academic advantage, and designs a professional German teaching plan as well as compiles a series of teaching materials based on long-term analysis and research upon the needs of foreign language students with different majors, such as Architectural German, Technical German, Electronic German, and so on. From the angles of both learning and teaching, a new model of professional German teaching is explored in the teaching of German as a foreign language.
Students also had an in-depth communication with Prof. Steinmüller regarding the obstacles they had met during their German learning.
(Translated by MEI Zhi)
