From Hong Kong to Paris

When Cornelia Braun and Jorinde Rieger set off for Paris in January 2020, the Corona pandemic still seemed a long way off: "We are very happy that we were still able to make the trip," say the two Bachelor students. They had earned this trip because of their dedicated performance in the ILLSA project of the Language Centre and met up with two students from the University of Hong Kong in the French capital. ILLSA stands for "Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness", was conceived under the direction of Prof. Dr. Tushar Chaudhuri at Hong Kong Baptist University and aims to explore the topic of "Healthy Cities" in a foreign language and help learners gain confidence in using the language for communication and research in a multicultural environment. 

Actually, the two students had signed up for a course at the Language Centre to brush up on their French skills from school: "Then when we heard about the project, we signed up right away." Cornelia Braun and Jorinde Rieger were in a project group with two students from Hong Kong. The Leuphana students took a close look at Lüneburg: What is important for a healthy city? "We looked at the topics of diversity, mobility and sustainability." From this, they developed a questionnaire. It was intended to address ten points that are important for a healthy city. "Our two Asian project partners looked at Hong Kong. It was very interesting for us that for them completely different points are relevant for a healthy city, such as security and political participation." The four students exchanged their views online and via Skype in French. "We were able to give each other an impression of our cities."

The trip was then a complete surprise for the two Leuphana students: "We didn't even know we could win anything in the project." Both had convinced with their accompanying presentations and the sustainable final project. They then met with Suki Chan Shuk Fong and Niki Ching Lai Ki in Paris. The international tandem took a critical look at Paris in the context of "Healthy City". To this day, the four continue to stay in touch via WhatsApp. 

At Leuphana's Language Centre, participation in the ILLSA project has been offered regularly in French (Christophe Hohwald) and Spanish (Dr. Nuria Miralles Andress) since the summer semester 2018. For the French courses in the winter semesters 2018/19 and 2019/20, the project was part of a blended learning format in which the students' tasks in the project were integrated into the course learning content.