Founding History

treffpunkt sprachen was founded in 2001 as the Language Centre of the University of Graz and transferred in 2009 to the teaching and research centre treffpunkt sprachen – Centre for Language, Plurilingualism and Didactics. The inter-faculty centre offers language courses in 26 languages, conducts research in the areas of regional and global multilingualism, language documentation, didactics as well as language teaching and learning research, and has the corresponding professional know-how due to many years of teaching and research experience.

In accordance with the target agreement with the Vice Rectorate for Studies and Teaching, the areas of teaching and research support each other and lead to a mutual promotion and development of teaching and research competence. From this point of view, research services are carried out that take into account methodological-didactic requirements in a university language teaching context and enable high-quality teaching. An important contribution to the optimization of teaching is made by further training measures, which are subject to transparent criteria and thus an essential feature of the centre. Referring to the promotion of teaching and research competence as a factor of quality development, the Centre for Language, Plurilingualism and Didactics argumentatively focuses on action research projects. Objective of the centre is to ensure the quality of teaching through action research. Lecturers who actively conduct research play a decisive role, especially since their professionalization interests form an essential basis for innovative research approaches. 

By merging teaching and research, the University of Graz sets a framework for the innovative and powerful development of the Centre for Language, Plurilingualism and Didactics. Both areas enable the implementation of new future-oriented projects that contribute to the improvement of university language teaching.