Professor Silke Mentchen
- Professor of German Studies
- Undergraduate Teaching and Examination Officer, German Section
Contact
Location
- Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics
About
Silke Mentchen, a graduate of Cologne University, has been teaching German as a foreign language at all levels in tertiary education since 1994. Apart from her position in the German Section, she is also fellow, Director of Studies and tutor at Magdalene College.
She is responsible for the curriculum of German undergraduate degree courses taught in the Faculty.
Research
Silke Mentchen has presented papers at the IDT (Internationale Deutschlehrer Tagung) twice, on using CALL and on using metaphors in foreign language teaching. She has organised a in 2017 funded by the Ƶ DAAD Research Hub. In 2018 she organised a two-day conference “”, and she is currently the lead organiser for a series of three workshops on .
She is also an editor for a book on ab initio language teaching for . Publication is planned for December 2022.
Published works:
- 2022, . UCL Press
- 2021, ‘Ƶ Modern and Medieval Languages Response to COVID-19’ In: Radic et al, . 307-320
- 2017, with A. Künzl-Snodgrass: Speed up your German, Routledge
- 2005 and 2013, (online)
- 2003, with A. Künzl-Snodgrass: Upgrade your German, Routledge
Further publications:
- Article ""
- Article "" in Sabine Dengscherz, Martin Businger & Jaroslava Taraskina (Hg.) 2014. Grammatikunterricht zwischen Linguistik und Didaktik.DaF/DaZ lernen und lehren im Spannungsfeld von Sprachwissenschaft, empirischer Unterrichtsforschung und Vermittlungskonzepten.
Teaching and supervision
Silke Mentchen teaches and examines at all levels, with a special interest in translation studies and beginners' language courses. She has developed on-line material, both for the Faculty’s teaching of translation (see ), and for potential students of languages, see here for examples: German modules for and , as well as on-line A2- and AS level material for .
Together with a colleague, she has published a German grammar exercise book, , a book focussing on common errors, and articles on the methodology and pedagogy of on-line resources, see and
Silke Mentchen is the Faculty’s adviser for the , the Faculty’s coordinator for and the Section’s coordinator for HE+. Further Widening Participation Projects involve the organisation of a series of short video clips on German A level topics, see here: CCARL. She has been a jury member for the annual DAAD/IMLR since 2015 and a judge on the national final competition since 2017.
In the context of the Sozialgeschichte lecture series for the German Section, she has organised the involvement of German writers with the support of Queen Mary University College, London. Previous speakers were:
2007: Sibylle Lewitscharoff and Angelika Overath 2008: Björn Kern 2009: Matthias Politycki and Jan Böttcher 2010: Kai Weyand 2011: Christopher Kloeble 2012: David Wagner 2013: Kristof Magnusson 2014: Thomas Meinecke and Ilija Trojanow 2015: Peter Schneider 2016: Ulf Stolterfoht 2018: Alissa Walser and Judith Kuckart.
Course contact for:
GEA1 Introduction to the German Language 1 - Listening Comprehension and Writing (together with Maren de Vincent-Humphreys))
GEA2 Introduction to the German Language 2 - Translation and Oral Examination A (together with Maren de Vincent-Humphreys)
GEB3 GEAV and Composition
GEC1 Translation from and into German