Dr. Gerlinde Weimer-Stuckmann

I combine international and Canadian work experience in tertiary education and love it.

In January 2015, I have completed my PhD program at the University of Waterloo. My research focussed on the development of teachers’ belief systems of vocabulary acquisition and how these played out in their instruction of adult learners. For the past fourteen years, I have taught a variety of German language and culture classes at the University of Victoria, the University of Waterloo and the University of Alberta. In 2015, I moved to Vechta temporarily and accepted a position as Language Program Coordinator at the International Office, University of Vechta in Germany. I was responsible for the procurement and delivery of courses and programs that prepared Syrian refugee students and professionals for their studies in Germany and their entry exam for admission to a German university: TestDaF. Most notably, I was responsible for the set-up of our blended learning environment aligning academic writing content with the language curriculum. With regard to the challenges of this position, I have been able to draw on my experience as a Sessional Instructor in tertiary education as well as my experience at the Victoria German School preparing Canadian high school students for their German language exams (DSD1 & DSD2).

In my teaching I strive to incorporate creative ways that help students engage with the material. In support of this goal, I use a wealth of instructional technology as a means to bring the outside world into my classroom. Furthermore, curriculum design has been one of my core duties I truly enjoyed. In a course redesign project funded by UVic’s Learning and Teaching Centre, “Learning Without Borders” I have worked as a co-investigator with Dr. Schallié designing course content that promotes plurilingual and pluricultural competence in language and culture classes. I have taught TA workshops at the University of Waterloo and the Universität Vechta and given a broad range of presentations in the past years (e.g., Spacing and Vocabulary Acquisition; Lernstationen im Unterricht; YouTube is my Friend – Using Online Material in Class; Teaching Pronunciation; Pipi, Emil & Co in the classroom: Youth literature in tertiary German language education; Muttersprache-Zweitsprache: Was geschieht beim Sprachenlernen).

Finally, I am also a Speech and Language Pathologist. This has sparked my interest in vocabulary acquisition and led to an MA at the University of Victoria with a research project using my own online vocabulary trainer to research how students learn best.