What is DaF_DaZ and what does it do?

What is DaF_DaZ and what does it do?

The subject of German as a foreign and second language explores processes of learning and teaching German in the context of a (global) society characterized by migration, multiculturalism and multilingualism, in which the traditional classifications of foreign and familiar, own and foreign culture, mother tongue and foreign language, etc. are becoming less and less effective.

It develops and evaluates didactic concepts and materials to promote language and culture-related learning for a wide variety of target groups at home and abroad.

It is an important contact and cooperation partner for international German studies and international German teachers' associations.

It is a key subject for coping with the tasks and challenges posed by increasing immigration to German-speaking countries.

Within the network of subjects concerned with the research and teaching of German, German as a foreign and second language sees and positions itself as the (foreign) language didactic laboratory of the future.

The profile of the subject is determined

• by focusing on learners and their diverse language and communication-related needs, interests and requirements. These range from a basic ability to use language in everyday life and at work to the ability to see through processes of meaning formation, to position oneself in relation to them and to participate creatively in them, and to deal with ambiguities, experiences of foreignness and contradictory attributions.
• through a comprehensive understanding of (German) language, which is understood as an instrument and resource for action, but also as an open and polycentric system whose rules are never fixed once and for all, but are constantly being renegotiated - as language in motion. Furthermore, it is seen as a medium for the construction, perspectivization and interpretation of reality in the field of tension between convention and innovation. It is interwoven with thinking, feelings, the whole self and places this self in a relationship to the world, to society and to itself. In this way, it opens up possibilities for action just as much as it limits them. Ultimately, language is an object of interpretative struggles and power-based attributions that need to be critically scrutinized, because the (German) language belongs to everyone and no one.
• by looking at the challenges that arise for prospective and trained teachers when teaching German in linguistically and culturally heterogeneous classes and courses. These challenges are manifold and concern, for example, ways of using and embedding heritage languages, dealing with taboos and special features of classroom management.
• by supporting the most successful possible educational biographies of multilingual children and young people through the appropriate qualification of teachers for language-aware subject teaching. The focus here is on school, educational and subject-specific language requirements that are both cross-curricular and specific to each type of school.  
• by focusing on sensitizing teachers to the skills of multilingual pupils and a resource-oriented error culture.
• through an interest in the linguistic and therefore social integration of adult immigrants, whose second language acquisition is often associated with psychosocial learning difficulties. The questions of how experiences of uprootedness, existential worries about earning a living in an unfamiliar socio-cultural environment and different attitudes towards German as a second language affect language learning processes and how integration can succeed under these and other migration-specific conditions are important areas of research and work in the subject.
• through the interdisciplinarity with which it combines the most diverse specialist perspectives (= linguistics, cultural studies, literature and media studies, sociology, history, psychology, foreign and second language didactics, etc.) with the aim of a more complex construction and thus a more precise understanding of its objects.

Finally, the subject is defined by inter- and post-nationality, because it assumes that the category of nation or national identity is no longer sufficient in today's world to adequately describe and understand post-migrant and post-modern societies.

Do you have any questions about this text or are you interested in the subject of German as a foreign and second language? Then write to us at: https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/slk/germanistik/daf/die-professur/beschaeftigte

The text was translated using DeepL