Opening on 29 April with the Federal President Joachim Gauck

Bielefeld University is taking a leading role in setting up the Turkish–German University (TDU) to be officially opened in Istanbul on the 29th of April by the German Federal President Joachim Gauck and Turkish President Abdullah Gül. Professor Dr. Uwe Koreik, Professor for German as a second language (DaF) at Bielefeld University, will also be attending. He worked on building up the language centre at the TDU and is intensively involved in its further development. A total of 30 German universities are participating in the development of this binational university. Six of them have taken a leading role in its design. Alongside Bielefeld University, these are the Freie Universität Berlin, the Technische Universität Berlin, Heidelberg University, the University of Cologne, and the University of Potsdam.

Building up the language centre is one of the most important tasks at a multilingual university. Together with his colleagues Nazan Gültekin-Karakoç and Agnieszka Hunstiger, Professor Koreik developed the curriculum for preparatory and paralinguistic teaching to be carried out in German and English. Further teaching materials are being developed continuously, particularly for technical language teaching. Bachelor courses are being taught in German (except law, which is taught in Turkish and German); master and postgraduate doctoral programmes are being taught in either German or English.
Applicants with insufficient language skills enrol in a ‘preparatory study year’ in which they have almost eight months to get up to standard. From the sixth week onwards, general language teaching is accompanied by subject-specific language teaching. This is based on technical language teaching materials that have been specially developed in Bielefeld for several subjects such as law and engineering. The programme will be supplemented by language courses after the end of the preparatory study year and before beginning subject-specific studies at a German university. The Turkish–German University already admitted its first students for the 2013/2014 winter semester – a great number of them in the ‘preparatory study year’ because of insufficient language skills.

Since last August, visiting academics from the TDU have been coming to Bielefeld for an intensive language course supervised by the PunktUm project. The language course for the next seven-person team will start on 2 May. The PunktUm project offers advice and training for international students at Bielefeld University. In addition, between forty and fifty students from Turkey are expected to attend an international summer language course in Bielefeld this August.
The Turkish–German University is a state-run Turkish university. In the medium term, it should host 5,000 students in five faculties. It currently offers three Bachelor courses in three faculties in the subjects Mechatronic Systems Engineering (Faculty of Engineering), Law (Faculty of Law), and Business Administration (Faculty of Economics and Administration) along with two Master courses at the Social Science Institute in Intercultural Management and European and International Affairs. A further Natural Science Faculty and a Cultural Studies and Social Science Faculty are being planned. A consortium of 29 German universities headed by the former president of the German parliament Rita Süssmuth is taking academic responsibility on the German side. The consortium’s affairs are administered by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Its basis is a German–Turkish intergovernmental agreement signed five years ago. The TDU is being financed jointly by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Turkish partners.


Further information is available online at:
www.tau.edu.tr

Contact:
Professor Dr. Uwe Koreik, Bielefeld University
Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies
Telephone: 0521 106-3631
Email: Uwe.Koreik@uni-bielefeld.de