The Language Center

Hello, my name is Lucy Blaney-Laible and I’m the Director at the Language Center, also known as the Sprachenzentrum, at the University of Stuttgart. I’m delighted to be able to welcome you as a new employee and incoming colleague of mine at the University of Stuttgart, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about what the Language Center can offer you while you’re here as an employee.

First of all, as the Language Center name suggests, we have a variety of languages that you can take. Over a dozen languages are available. We have a particular focus on higher levels of English and also on German as a second language, if that’s something you’re interested in learning. We also have within the Language Center the Schreibwerkstatt, also known as the Writing Center, which focuses on academic writing in English and in German. We can support you and possibly also your students in academic writing and publishing work in both languages. Then we also have a variety of intercultural offers that can help you come to grips with your time at the University of Stuttgart working with large international groups, different types of people and populations and how you can best work with your colleagues as well. And then one of our exciting offers is also our Lehrwerkstatt, also known as Teaching Workshop, where you can study English as a medium of instruction, so if you need to teach your courses in English, we can help you come to terms with how to express yourself in English in the classroom. And then we also offer Classroom Deutsch, so if you’re not a native German speaker, you can learn how to teach better in German in the classroom. We’ll be very happy to welcome you in any of these offers that we have at the Language Center and please feel free to contact us at any time.

Hello. My name is Xiao Wang and I am a coordinator for intercultural competence at the Language Center of the University of Stuttgart. Welcome to our university! At your new place of work, you will interact with people from different countries and cultures from day one. The Language Center can help you build your intercultural competence and settle in to your new environment. This is an essential prerequisite for successful collaboration.

So what can we offer you? Anything from workshops and weekend courses to individual consultations, taught in German, English or bilingually. I would like to especially recommend the certificate “Intercultural Competence and International Actionability” for employees, called ZIKIH-MA for short. This certificate provides you with an additional qualification after attending various events and individual coaching sessions with us. For your institute, this means improved internal communication and increased success rates. As further added value, the certificate course helps you decrease intercultural friction, avoid misunderstandings, improve your working atmosphere and an expand your horizons through intercultural learning. If you have any questions about intercultural competence and the ZIKIH-MA certificate, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would like to wish you a successful start at our university and hope to welcome you soon to the Language Center.