Department of Applied English Studies: Present Situation and Future Development

Features:
- exclusively use English in our department, in the classrooms as well as outside
- use authentic teaching materials
- utilize modern teaching methods
- train our students in journalistic English and
- teach our students how to broadcast professionally
- offer students an insight into linguistics and literature as well as (inter-)cultural studies
- train our students to learn and perfect Business English and
- train our ?students in ESP (English for special / specific purposes)
- give our students the opportunity of deepening their ideas in the context of a Senior Project in order to qualify them better
- give our students the opportunity of having teaching experience

Positioning
- train and develop our students’ English news and broadcasting expertise
- increase our students’ attractiveness for the job market by
- developing specialties of English news editing
- developing concrete ideas on professional broadcasting
- training our students to understand and produce different text types relevant to Business English
- giving our students profound insight into linguistics and literature as relevant tools

Development:
- set up professional broadcasting and recording facilities
- recruit some professionals in this field
- set up courses which are closely related to our broadcasting facilities
- teach our students how to layout newspapers and how to write newspaper articles
- establish an opportunity to provide our students with teaching practice by cooperating with a cram-school
- develop the criteria for our Senior Project

Curriculum Design:
- put the focus on the program of Journalistic English
- set up a curriculum to integrate the radio studio into our courses in order to develop a consistent approach towards journalistic English
- find ways of teaching literature in an interesting way to make regular readers out of our students and establish a curriculum accordingly
- publish in paper form some main ideas elaborated during the Teachers’ Workshops and make them available to all teaching staff, inclusive of new colleagues, in order to guarantee continuity in our teaching
- set up the formal regulations for our Senior Project

Methodology:
- prioritize practice to theory
- teach our students according to the method of “learning by doing”
- integrate new methodological approaches
- give all our staff the possibility of having regular feedback about their teaching practice
- help and supervise our students in our Senior Project

Strategies:
- hold regular morning reading sessions which are incorporated into related courses
- develop, record and produce an English news program in the radio studio
- encourage our teaching staff to publish articles regularly to give them the opportunity of deepening their insight into teaching
- encourage our teaching staff o participate in conferences on TESL / TEFL in order to complete their teaching practice on the basis of theoretical insight