INNES German Language Education Quality Standards

What is high-quality education? To us, it means the combination of student success and student satisfaction. But how to get there? We believe that first and foremost, it is the high lesson quality at INNES that matters. Together with outstandingly friendly and personalized service, great facilities and ambitious students from around the world, INNES aims to provide the best possible environment for successful and efficient German learning.

At INNES you will find an academic and professional yet friendly and individual learning space. Because of our small groups, students get a lot of personal interaction time with their teachers – so they can expect a more personalized learning journey and a faster learning progress in your German language courses. What sets INNES apart is the high teaching quality and the friendly, personalized treatment of all our students. For us, it is the people, their life stories, career or academic goals that are the fuel for our efforts.

Registration I Level tests

Learning German at the right level is essential to your learning success. Apart from our easy online registration and free online German level test, you can also come to the INNES reception for a personal level assessment.

German language teachers

All our teachers are qualified, motivated, experienced, creative and able to respond to individual needs. All our teachers are educated to university level and are trained to teach German in a communicative, dynamic and activating way. Teachers are carefully selected by means of a three step assessment procedure. After a telephone interview, and a trial lesson, teachers submit a self-reflection, followed by a training session with our quality managers.

Feedback Systems to assure high quality

In each course, there is a threefold feedback process to maximize student satisfaction: #1 lesson observation, #2 online satisfaction survey and #3 class feedback. Lesson observations are followed by a personal feedback or trainings session with the aim to turn good teachers into fantastic teachers. After course week one, students can fill in an anonymous Satisfaction Survey online, so that all questions, doubts or problems can be responded to immediately. Because we believe that open teacher-student communication is the heartbeat of a good class atmosphere, teachers conduct an anonymous class feedback in course week two. Finally, our helpful reception staff always has an open ear for all your concerns

Inside the classroom I INNES Quality Standards

All teachers at INNES are trained to teach in accordance with our quality charter. This quality charter includes guidelines detailing what students need to achieve in order to be awarded a certificate with ECTS, what elements influence students’ final scores, how to handle progress tests, course planning, course methodology, feedback procedures and community building. All INNES Teachers work according to the following didactic principles:

#1 Student-centeredness. People and their personal needs and stories always stand in the foreground of all learning, and not the materials.

#2 Individual treatment. All learning activities are graded to participants’ individual needs and wishes. Stronger students get extra exercises and challenges, weaker students extra support. To guarantee individual treatment, we keep our groups small.

#3 Student feedback. Teachers create a communicative classroom environment in which feedback, wishes and suggestions can be placed personally at any time. Teachers always conduct an anonymous in-class feedback after the first course week to respond to students’ suggestions.

#4 Well-structuredness. All teachers carefully plan and stage their lessons and the entire course, in correspondence to students’ needs. They also give students an overview of the entire course, test dates, excursions etc. on the first course day.

#5 Group dynamics for active lessons. All teachers employ a mixture of individual, pair and group work to keep learners engaged and involved at all times. Our teacher’s mantra is to explain only as much as needed, so that students can get as active as possible, and communicate non-stop in German with each other.

#6 Balance of all four skills with extra focus on speaking practice. From the beginning, you will practice speaking, writing, reading and listening - however, we at INNES emphasises the extended speaking practice in all courses, because we know that this is the skill needed most in real life. This turns our students into independent communicators.

#7 Variety of activities. While it is important to establish some kind of learning routine, we know that learners love variety - which is why we train teachers to make sure that activities are creative and varied to engage learners with all their senses.

#8 Learning transfer. We at INNES are very structured and we expect our teachers to guarantee a smooth changeover between levels. In addition to the progress tests throughout the course, students draw a learning diagram visualising the contents learnt at the end of the course, thus reviewing everything and self-assessing their learning development.

Course Materials

A good course book and useful materials are also very important. We always keep up-to-date with the course book market in order to choose the best option for you. In our German language courses we are currently using the course book Menschen (Hueber) and from B2.1, we use Mittelpunkt (Klett). In addition, we have a well-equipped teacher’s library full with only the best didactic materials for German language learners.

Facilities

INNES institute is bright, modern, super central and cosy, with clean and pleasant classrooms and sanitary facilities. During break times, everybody gets together over coffee in the INNES reception, where a lot of lasting friendships have been sparked. All our teachers are free to use laptops, beamers and speakers for a multimedia German learning experience.

Groups and Participants

The average participant number is 6, in some months at the beginning of the study year a bit higher. Our students are our heartbeat and what we are most proud of - we find our learners are ambitious, motivated, dedicated learners from all fields and corners of the world. Even though we have a lot of international students and academics, INNES is open to everybody, who wants to learn German in Vienna. Students can start connecting with each other at our interactive Welcome Ceremony held at the beginning of each month. Student networking continues during their common breaks, in self-organised conversation groups or at social events.

Partners

Our academic partners include TU Wien, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and numerous prominent universities worldwide – from Harvard to Nanyang Technological University Singapore. Our business clients include Novomatic, Green Tube, McDonalds, OSCE and European Centers around the globe, just to name a few. In addition we also work with Language Schools and University departments where German is taught as a foreign language. See here a full list of all our partners.

International Accreditation

INNES Institute Vienna is fully licensed as an exam centre for the Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch (ÖSD) language certificate. ÖSD Certificates are state-accredited and internationally recognised.