TEFL

left to right: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Frisch, Dr. Almut Küppers, Dr. Jules Bündgens-Kosten, Helena McKenzie, Rieke Dieckhoff, Dr. Subin Nijhawan, Linda Fernandes, Dr. Matthias Munsch, Kira Schad, Prof. Dr. Britta Viebrock, Laura van den Brink.

TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) as an academic discipline is concerned with the conceptual development and empirical study of language teaching and learning processes in institutional contexts and beyond. As an applied science, TEFL relates theories and conceptual considerations to (teaching) practices and their empirical foundation. In turn, new theoretical, conceptional, and empirical questions will be developed from these aspects. Approaches in language teaching and research can focus on learning theories, foreign language pedagogy, aspects of Anglophone literatures and cultures as well as empirical questions.

All these subject areas are essential for the development of professional competences and foreign language teaching skills. On the one hand, foreign language teacher education is about changing perspectives (from learner to teacher as a 'reflective practitioner' and 'agent of change'). It is about becoming aware of the multidimensionality and complexity of what constitutes institutional foreign language teaching as well as specific knowledge about foreign language learning processes. On the other hand, the focus is on the implementation of knowledge from Linguistics, Literary Studies and Cultural Studies into English language education.

TEFL relates to and is embedded in international academic discourses: In the Anglo-American context, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a well-established discipline in university research and teaching that deals with similar questions, but focuses more on (socio-) linguistic features and processes of language acquisition. What is more, the importance of English for the global academic community requires from students of English and American Studies to be able to recognise and discuss international research on foreign language education in a variety of contexts. The status of English as an international lingua franca means that also teaching English at school has to foster certain objectives, including international understanding, global citizenship education, transcultural competences, education for sustainable development, and so on.