Study Abroad

Are you looking for an interesting, worthwhile way of spending time abroad? Would you like to go to university in another country? Then you should consider applying for a study abroad exchange with one of the Department of English Studies’ exchange programmes. This may be part of the Erasmus+ programme or a separate exchange within or beyond Europe. Whether you are studying English as your major or minor subject, or as part of your BEd/MEd degree, you're welcome to apply for any of these exchanges. 

The benefits of participating in an exchange program are definitely worth it, particularly for language students! You’ll get to know what it’s like to be a student in another country and learn what the differences are to studying in Germany. This will help you broaden your horizons and gain a new perspective on things, within and beyond your degree subject. You will meet new people from all around the world, learn/improve your foreign language skills and see interesting, new places. Take the first step to becoming a new, more self-reliant person.

Accreditation

Wherever you study abroad, the Department of English Studies will be happy to recognise your achievements there towards your degree in Trier. To make sure this runs smoothly, there are a few steps you need to follow.

1) After you have been selected and nominated for an exchange, you will need to fill in a "Learning Agreement". This is where you list the classes you intend to take abroad, and what you wish to have acreditted on your return. See here for an example. Ms Laura Witz (for Erasmus in UK) , Dr Britta Colligs (for Erasmus in Europe), or Ms Carol Ebbert-Hübner (for North America) can help you to decide which classes are suitable for you and roughly equivalent to what you would need to take in Trier.

We are generally fairly lenient in our understanding of what is 'equivalent' as we see value in spending time abroad, beyond merely collecting credit points. Nonetheless, as a rule of thumb, to get a linguistics or literature class acreditted in Trier, you need to attend a linguistics or literature class at your host university. The credit points and topics of the classes are most important; not the modes of assessment. Before you make an appointment to discuss this with your contact person named above, draw up a rough list of classes from your host university which interest you and are  appropriate in their topics and level of study. 

2) Once you have returned from your time abroad and have received your transcript from your host university, you will need to complete an 'Antrag auf Annerkennung von bisher erbrachten Leistungen' which can be found, alongside other information and instructions, on the website of the FBII Dekanat. You will need to submit, for example, a Porta print-out of your previously competed modules, and your Learning Agreement, and all documents should be submitted to the Dean's Office of FBII. It may  be helpful to add a table of equivalences (which specific classes from abroad you’d like accredited as which in Trier), if this is not clear from your LA. With any questions, please contact Ms Witz, Dr Colligs, Ms Ebbert-Hübner or Dr Bettina Kraft. 

A couple of notes on some specific cases of accreditation:

If the rest of a module was/will be completed in Trier but the grade or part of it comes from your university abroad, you will need to hand in the relevant (partly-)signed SVB as part of the application for accreditation. If you have completed the Trier classes as part of the module before your time abroad, hand in the SVB together with your application for accrditation. If you complete the Trier classes as part of the module after your time abroad has already been accredited with a module grade, hand in the SVB and apply for an "Ergänzungsanerkennung" to have the module grade submitted to PORTA. If the module grade is going to come from a Trier class completed after your time abroad, take your accreditation confirmation (and SVB with other signatures if needed) to the person responsible for uploading the module grade to PORTA - the person who is marking your portfolio or term-paper as the 'Prüfungsleistung'. With further questions on this process, please contact Dr kraft. 

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