Linde Trenkel

Linde Trenkel

Ph.D. Student

Linde studied Japanese, Hungarian, and German as a Foreign Language in Berlin, Budapest, and Tokyo, as well as music pedagogy in Kecskemet, Hungary.
She holds an M.A. in Hungarian and Japanese Studies from Humboldt University. In her thesis, she outlined common aspects of language and music, developing a teaching concept that uses rhythmic aspects of music for learning Japanese pronunciation.

She has worked as a German instructor at Aichi Prefectural University, Japan, and has conducted workshops for Swedish teachers of German in cooperation with Uppsala University. Linde has also taught German language courses at various institutions, such as HU Berlin, the Goethe Institute, Bard College Berlin, or the University of Wuppertal.

She has a special interest in the acquisition of phonetics in second language research, without having a computational linguistics background. Many of her students have a special interest in interactive learning tools. At the same time, practical phonetics often appears as a side topic in language courses. Consequently, her PhD thesis will deal with the prediction of difficulties that, for example, Japanese learners face with German vowels. She aims to find a hybrid approach, using both conventional methods and AI from the user’s perspective to enhance motivation for the teaching and learning of practical phonetics. Her thesis is supervised by Prof. Kevin Tang (HHU) and Prof. Fernand Hörner (HSD).