English Didactics


The department of English Didactics is concerned with the content, methods and goals of teaching English as a foreign language, drawing on both theoretical and empirical foundations of foreign language didactics and language acquisition research.


 


As an applied science of learning and teaching English as well as English literature and culture, the department of English Didactics is dedicated to develop and maintain an interdisciplinary dialogue with  both English and American studies in regard to linguistics, literary and cultural studies as well as the research of diverse processes of foreign language education:
 

Inter- and transcultural learning

  • Competence development in foreign language teaching
  • Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
  • In-depth learning processes in the EFL Classroom
  • Digital learning environments



Through the strengthened relationship of theory and practice, students should be empowered to critically and  reflectively deal with content-related, methodological and educational policy aspects of didactic issues in order to plan, design, and evaluate their own English lessons competently. The approach to teaching English as a foreign language at the department of English Didactics at the University of Mainz is content-related and methodically based on the Graz Group's Pluriliteracies Model of Deeper Learning. Pluriliteral learning is a didactic approach to promote deeper learning and twentyfirst-century skills through pluriliteracies, meaning through subject-spefcific literacies in more than one language, and requires subject-specific (language) action. The development, expansion and internalization of plurilingual and pluricultural competence, communicative language competence, communicative language skills as well as communicative strategies are   conditions and outcomes of deeper learning.

 

https://pluriliteracies.com