The teaching of general foreign language knowledge at university language resource centers ideally differs from the teaching of academic and professional communication. While the teaching of general language competencies of a foreign language concentrates on general language production and reception abilities in a foreign language, the teaching of academic and professional language concentrates on the language production and reception in a specific discipline, meaning the lexical, syntactic, textual and pragmatic characteristic features of the respective academic or professional language. For instructors, this space presents didactic and methodological challenges in supporting the acquisition of accurate register, as well as the effective use of academic and professional language and communication competencies.

The presentations in this working group will address the issue of how instructors at university language centers approach this complex topic and formulate corresponding curricular and didactic objectives in order to methodologically implement these specific language acquisition objectives. The goal is to enable students to effectively master sufficient specific academic and professional communication competencies within their chosen field of study or career path, on both a conceptual, as well as pragmatic level. The variety of presentations in this working group represents a wide range of innovative and creative approaches to working to master the specific challenges related to teaching academic and professional communication in university language centers.