Presentation by Stephan Bedke (Germany) at the Study Visit Group No: 183 (CEDEFOP) , “Educational cooperation with professional institutions to promote language skills 2014″.

1. Language skills in university
scholarship programs
Elite Network of Bavaria
Stephan Bedke
March 2014

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1700
MWP ESG IDK FOR
MaxWeber-Prog
ResearchScholarsh
6
NFG
InternationalJun
ResearchGroups
EliteGraduate
DoctorateProgra
Elite Network of Bavaria
about 3000 members
1000 100 150
Financial volume: 20 million € per year
Beate Lindner
Institution
 Main objectives:
 Support of
promising talents
 Attracting best
scientists
 For the benefit of
the State of
Bavaria

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Actions developed in coordination with other entities
 Cooperation with various other
educational institutions:
 German National Academic Foundation
(Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)
 Language schools in the target country
(UK, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) and
language courses in Arabic, Chinese,
Japanese, Russian, Turkish
 Academic partner of the Lindau Nobel
Laureate Meeting etc.
 Team Sprachraum at LMU Munich:
 Soft-skill seminars
 Bavarian universities
Max Weber-Program students at
language school in Salamanca

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Strategies
 International scholarship programs
 Participation in scientific meetings,
conferences etc. (Lindau Nobel
Laureate Meeting, Get-together
meetings, international science
meetings (ESOF) ...)
 Exposure to world-class research
 Promotion of foreign language skills
within the programs
 “Networking” between researchers and
scientists
Nobel laureate Robert Huber (Chemistry)
with alumna Nadja Bertlef at Lindau Nobel
Laureate Meeting 2013

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Results
 Our programs attract students / young
researchers from from all around the
world
 Percentage of non-German scholarship
holders: 16,7% (despite Max Weber-
Program)
 Interaction between the scholarship
holders across our five programs
 High demand for language courses etc.
 Essential need to be able to
communicate in at least one lingua
franca
Dan Shechtman – Israeli Nobel Laureate
(Chemistry) at Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting
2013 with international young researchers

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- Motivation is a decisive factor in successful second language
acquisition.
- Meaningfulness of foreign language learning is self-evident for our
students and young researchers.
- Motivation is inevitably very high.
Conclusions