DigiLex UniComm

DigiLex UniComm, a digital service funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is a further development of the formulation dictionary UniComm Deutsch, which was developed and published in 2012 as part of the project "Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Studies" (MuMiS) funded by the Volkwagen Foundation.

What exactly is DigiLex UniComm?

International students are confronted with numerous linguistic, subject-related and cultural challenges when they begin their studies at a German university. For successful studies, it is not only essential to acquire subject-specific language and academic knowledge, but also good communicative skills in German, the language of study. Many international students have great insecurities, especially when it comes to coping with university communication situations, such as actively participating in lectures, making oral presentations, or conducting office hours.

In every language, certain relatively fixed formulations are used for the linguistic realization of recurring communicative requirements. These holistically stored expressions can be quickly recalled and used as "ready-made components". The use of such "islands of reliability" relieves the burden on oral language production and makes it more fluent. They give international students the confidence to speak linguistically correctly and stylistically appropriately.

The digital learning tool DigiLex UniComm offers students a large repertoire of phrases for coping with university communication situations, including detailed descriptions of their specific conditions of use. This gives them the opportunity to prepare themselves independently for central university communication situations, depending on time and location. Ideally, DigiLex UniComm will become a permanent companion that is consulted and used whenever students need to deal with oral university communication situations relevant to their studies (such as preparing an oral presentation, writing an e-mail message to a lecturer, or asking for feedback on a term paper during office hours).

The DigiLex UniComm covers the following categories of university communication situations: Course Participation, Oral Presentation, Online Communication, Email Communication, and Office Hours Conversations (all link). There is at least one explainer video for each of the categories. For the category Speech Hour Discussions, short video clips are also provided to illustrate selected speech actions. The explanatory descriptions of the individual situations and the conditions of use of the respective speech acts are offered in German, English and Ukrainian. The formulations themselves, however, are offered exclusively in German.

We now hope you enjoy working with DigiLex UniComm!