Teaching Business German at Wenzao Ursuline College Teaching Methods and Curriculum
Business German becomes more and more an important part in German language teaching, because language students with a broad knowledge in German are more eager to look for a career in the field of business. Teaching Business German therefore has to be orientated on the practical work in the field of business. In order to achieve this goal new teaching methods have to be introduced. In the first part of this contribution an overview is given over experiential methods in the classroom like role-plays, simulation and project work. The material being used in this course is introduced. The methods are based on a curriculum especially designed for teaching Business German at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages. In the second part the curriculum for Business German with its underlying objectives and goals are explained and discussed.
Culture as Information and Culture as Affective Process: A Comparative Study
: This paper describes an application of the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory or CCAI (Kelley and Meyers 1995a) to measure the effects of two ways to teach about German culture in beginning language courses. A first language (L1) process-oriented approach and a second language (L2) knowledge-based approach were implemented in separate classes. Students filled out the CCAI in pretreatment and post-treatment conditions. Quantitative analyses of results established that the treatment group, taught with constructivist, process-oriented tasks as articulated in the National Standards (1996), experienced significantly positive results on the CCAI composite score and on two out of four subscales that assess cultural sensibilities. Conversely, the control group, which spent commensurate time working with knowledge-based orientations characteristic of many textbooks on the market today, experienced a nonsignificant decrease in cultural receptivity in those same CCAI measures.
Mechanical behaviour and durability of high volume fly ash cementitious composites
The purpose of this research is to separate different morphological particles of ASTM class F fly ash, and study their effect on mechanical behaviour and durability of high volume cementitious mixtures. In this research wet separation of raw fly ash is carried out, which resulted in three layers of different morphological particles. The first layer of particles float, comprise of about 1-5% of fly ash, is identified as cenospheres or hollow spheres. The second layer of particles is measured to be 55-60% of raw fly ash and consisting of porous spherical and rounded particles rich in Si and Al. The third layer particles is measured to be about 35-40% of raw fly ash. High volume fly ash cementitious composites containing second or third layer particles are tested under compression and bending, highlighting a higher strength and ductility in comparison to cementitious ones containing raw fly ash particles. KEYWORDS. Cementitious matrix; Raw fly ash; Second layer particles; Third layer particles.