In this interdisciplinary project called „elektronisch unterstütztes Lernen von Deutsch als (fremde) Wissenschaftssprache“ e-learning-based language learning modules are developed and evaluated which are to enhance receptive and productive text competence of students who speak German as a first or as a foreign language.
The project combines three thematic issues defined by the Forum Bildungsforschung: Language didactics, multilingualism and educational integration. We focus on complex nominal phrases which are known as a notorious problem for DaZ/DaF-learners, not only concerning the reception, but also in the production of texts of special purposes, especially academic texts. In linguistics attributes may be described on three levels: morpho-syntax, semantics, and style. In a (foreign) language didactic view, it is of interest for us which of these levels cause the most problems, but also whether we must distinguish mother tongue speakers from foreign language learners. Combined with these questions, we establish another which is of a foreign language didactic and at the same time a question of language technology: which formats of tasks and which forms of feedback may be moved away from a face-to-face teaching class to one or more autonomous e-learning modules. The project has been continously supported by the Centrum für Lehrerbildung und Bildungsforschung (CeLeB) of Hildesheim University.
SeLA was concerned with methods for the preparation of electronic dictionaries for South Africa; both, theoretical and practical aspects were covered; we used methods from linguistics, language technology and information science. The focus lied on South Africa´s multilingualism, on specialized terminology, and on new concepts for user interfaces of electronic dictionaries. SeLA involved both a North/South- and a South/South-cooperation, the joint development of concepts for university teaching in lexicography, student and researcher exchange, and accompanying research in intercultural (scientific) communication.