National Language Institute
The State Language Institute (LSI), based in Bochum, is a further education institution that develops and conducts intensive language courses on a scientific basis.
history
This advanced training facility was founded in Bochum in 1973 as the "Teaching Institute for the Russian Language". The institute went back to an initiative of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) and was established by the then Science Minister Johannes Rau as an institution of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia .
Between 1980 and 1985, the NRW state government also set up a state institute for the Chinese, Japanese and Arabic languages in Bochum. The background to this second institute was the objectives of the “ Ruhr Action Program ” for structural policy promotion of the Ruhr area as a business location. It was set up and funded by the NRW Minister of Science and Economics, Reimut Jochimsen .
In 1993 the two original institutes were merged under the common roof "State Language Institute North Rhine-Westphalia".
In 2007, the state institution became a central operating unit of the Ruhr University Bochum .
The director of the LSI is Klaus Waschik (since 2013).
tasks
The LSI develops language course concepts for the core languages Arabic , Chinese , Japanese and Russian , which are implemented in intensive courses lasting two to three weeks. The LSI departments have also become known under the terms “Arabicum”, “Sinicum”, “Japonicum” and “Russicum”. Other languages represented in the LSI are Korean , Persian (Farsi and Dari) and Turkish.
The teaching materials used in the intensive courses (printed and digital media) are developed in-house. Some of the textbooks are published by Helmut Buske Verlag Hamburg.
The courses offered by the LSI are used by interested parties from business, politics, foreign cultural policy institutions, the media and representatives from science (lecturers, researchers, students) from all over the German-speaking area.
The LSI has partnerships with universities in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Odessa, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanking, Tokyo, Osaka, Tunis and Amman; On the one hand, these enable guest lecturers from these universities to be invited and on the other - in addition to the language courses in Bochum - the implementation of LSI language courses at the listed locations in the target regions.
The LSI serves as an interface between the scientific foundation and the practical transfer of skills for languages that are not or not sufficiently represented in the canon of German schools and universities.
literature
- Jochen Pleines, “The LSI - a political issue from the start”, in Pleines (ed.), Sprachen und mehr, Wiesbaden (Harrassowitz) 1998. ISBN 3-447-04103-X .
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 13.1 ″ N , 7 ° 15 ′ 33 ″ E