German Institute Partnership (GIP) Aachen - Warsaw - Lublin - Wuppertal

 

Since 2015, four universities are involved in the so-called GIP, which has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD for short.

Two German and two Polish universities are involved. The German side consists of the Institute for Language and Communication Studies at RWTH Aachen University, which leads the project management, but also the University of Wuppertal. The Polish partners are, since 2015, the University of Warsaw including the Instytut Komunikacji Specjalistycznej i Interkulturowej, the Centrum Kształcenia Nauczycieli Języków Obcych and the Edukacji Europejskiej UW and, since 2020, also the Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej in Lublin.

Furthermore, within the framework of GIP research projects, there are cooperations with companies. In the past, cooperations already took place with EDEKA and the measuring instrument manufacturer WIKA, but also with non-university institutes.

Content Alignment

Nearly since its inception in January 2015, the GIP has rested on two thematic focal points.

The activities in focal point I relate to vocational language training in the German-Polish economic area. Focal point II focuses on memory editing and literary studies projects in the German-Polish cultural area.

Within focal Point I, longer-term, practice-oriented research and language promotion projects are aimed at implementing a three-step approach comprising language needs assessment, curriculum development and production of teaching materials.

Surveys on language needs in German, Polish and German-Polish companies gave rise to empirical, requirements-based curricular considerations which lead to the development of teaching-learning materials for face-to-face and telemedial forms of teaching in company and vocational school-based initial and continuing education and training in the German-Polish economic area. Currently, textbooks and further teaching materials are being developed with focus on German as a foreign language and using digitally supported tools for teaching German as a foreign language in preparation for vocational training. One overarching concern is to provide sustainable impulses for the development of the Polish vocational school system and vocational school teacher training.

Within the framework of advanced training opportunities for teachers and prospective teachers of German, the survey and the significance of strategies for teaching professionally field-relevant communicative competences in mother tongue, second language and foreign language acquisition are to be addressed.

In addition, a new project in focal point I will focus on subject communication and its multimodal manifestations relevant for higher education teaching from a cultural and language-contrastive perspective.

The projects related to cultural studies of the second focal point focus on the communication of elementary contemporary topics for learners and audiences: German students, pupils, exhibition visitors. After the most recent projects with German and Polish students have dealt with the German-Polish past and published a biographical reading book on Edmund Polak, a Warsaw and former concentration camp prisoner, current projects focus on the exploration and digitally supported mediation of pop culture texts for the field of German as a foreign language. A renewed commemorative cultural project aims to bring to mind events from the time of the German occupation of Poland and aims to translate texts for a special exhibition about a Polish eyewitness to the extermination of Europeans of the Jewish faith in Majdanek, a district of Lublin, and other places in eastern Poland.

In both focal points, the GIP relies on the cooperation of researchers and also students from all sides, including workshops and sub-project meetings as well as scholarships for students and doctoral students.

The promotion of young researchers from German and Polish students and doctoral candidates is a central goal of the GIP. Students, graduates and junior researchers have the opportunity to deal with selected issues from joint research projects in final and qualification theses and to exchange information via a permanent scientific forum.

 

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