Professor Silke Mentchen, a graduate of Cologne University, has been teaching German as a foreign language at all levels in tertiary education since 1994. She is one of two Senior Language Teaching Officers in the Department of German and Dutch, within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.
Silke is in charge of the Cambridge German Network, is the Faculty’s adviser for the Prince’s Teaching Institute, the Faculty’s coordinator for whynotlang@cam (for details of a recent event click here) and the Department’s coordinator for HE+. She organises the Sozialgeschichte lecture series for Part IB in the Department and is currently the Faculty’s Director of Outreach and School Liaison.
Silke 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 here), and for potential students of languages, see here for examples: German modules for HE+ and Just-in-Time Grammar, as well as on-line A2- and AS level material for Villiers Park.
Together with a colleague, she has published Upgrade Your German (Routledge, 2003), a German grammar exercise book, and articles on the methodology and pedagogy online resources (see below).
Silke has presented papers at the IDT (Internationale Deutschlehrer Tagung) twice, on using CALL and on using metaphors in foreign language teaching. She is currently the organiser of a workshop on multilingualism funded by the Cambridge DAAD Research Hub.
Silke Mentchen and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, Speed up your German: Strategies to avoid common errors (Taylor and Francis, 2017)
Silke Mentchen and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, 'Just in time Grammar: eine Zwischenbilanz' in Sabine Dengscherz, Martine Businger & Jaroslava Taraskina (Hg.), Grammatikunterricht zwischen Linguistik und Didaktik.DaF/DaZ lernen und lehren im Spannungsfeld von Sprachwissenschaft, empirischer Unterrichtsforschung ind Vermittlungskonzepten (2014), pp. 237-52.
Silke Mentchen and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, 'Just in time Grammar: Writing an online programme', Body, Space and Technology Journal, 7/2 (Brunel, 2008)
Silke Mentchen and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, Upgrade Your German (Routledge, 2003)
Silke Mentchen and Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass have also developed on-line A2- and AS level material for Villiers Park and Just-in-Time Grammar, an on-line grammar programme.