Aug 29, 2016
1st symposium „Deutsch von Anfang an für Flüchtlinge fördern“ overcomes the balancing act between institution and voluntary work
On 26 August 2016, the first symposium „Deutsch von Anfang an für Flüchtlinge fördern“ took place at the TU Dresden. On this day, more than 80 registered academics, professional teachers and volunteer language mediators from all over Germany exchanged views on the specifics of teaching German to refugees. The participants wanted to coordinate specialist knowledge, professionalise interfaces between voluntary work and well-founded DaF/DaZ teaching, but also uncover new research questions.
At the beginning of the day, academics and teachers presented their positions for discussion in keynote speeches. In the two subsequent disqspaces, a workshop method, the experiences and questions of all participants were taken up and worked on. While the first disqspace focused on the voluntary offers for language entry, chances and limits of volunteer tutors and the interaction of different providers of language and integration courses, the second disqspace dealt with concrete concepts and experiences on quality assurance and qualification offers.
Teaching German to refugees is a special challenge. Especially in the first weeks of their stay, refugees receive language learning offers from volunteers, mostly lay people, in many forms. The commitment is great, but the specific expertise is scattered and patchy, both on the volunteer and professional side. In addition, the transitions between initial language support or lay support and institutionalised DaF/DaZ teaching are often uncoordinated. The symposium was thus intended as a contribution to the systematisation and foundation of German lessons for refugees. The aim was to make real-life German practice visible and to bring it into dialogue with professional approaches, theory and research, in order to use this as a basis for the appropriate further development of teaching principles and methods for the specifics of the target group.
The symposium was held under the patronage of Petra Köpping, Saxon State Minister for Equality and Integration. The day was conceived by Dr. Anja Centeno García, a linguist and cultural scientist and herself a volunteer language mediator. It was organised by the International Office of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of the TU Dresden. The symposium is organised by the Centre for Integration Studies (ZfI) of the TU Dresden in cooperation with the Dresden Initiative DAMF - Deutschkurse Asyl Migration Flucht. The symposium is supported by funds from the Institutional Strategy of the TU Dresden, financed by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments.
1st symposium "Deutsch von Anfang an für Flüchtlinge fördern“
Date: 26 August 2016
Time: 9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location: von Gerber Building, Bergstraße 53, 01069 Dresden