Meet Elif: Overcoming barriers through language

On Kiron Campus, we host a variety of programs that strive to contribute toward better professional and personal integration possibilities for students through language courses and community building support. Whether students need a full study track or want to learn supplementary skills, the Campus provides diverse options to make their goals a reality.

Meet Elif

Originally from Turkey, Kiron student Elif moved to Germany in 2017 and started the process of learning German. After hearing about Kiron from friends, she registered on the Campus, took the TESL language course and received a certificate of completion. Elif has even had some successes already on the job market and was able to secure a position as a project assistant at the University of Worms. She believes in the collective impact of gaining education and is highly motivated to apply her TESL certification to teach English in schools in Germany. At the same time, Elif has plans for pursuing her academic and professional goals and has expectations from Kiron to help her achieve these goals. “Education is not just for getting a job or having a good career, you can develop better and be a good person.”

Adapting to student needs

Kiron seeks to engage in active dialogue with its students to gather their feedback and learn about their perspectives and challenges in order to find innovative ways to tackle these obstacles. For Elif, she would like to have more networking opportunities in order to find a job as well as to practice her German and English with tandem partners. Kiron has already been working in that direction to provide more blended learning support. Thanks to our partnership with BASF, we have been working toward improving our community tools on Kiron Campus. Kiron also wants to facilitate networking possibilities among students by connecting them with corporate and academic partners on our platform. By developing partnerships with local organizations, Kiron seeks to enable learners like Elif to gain access to opportunities and resources which may be difficult or impossible to find without the support of an active online community.

Elif also has access to tutorials with a trained facilitator on Kiron Campus who can provide practical language learning support to increase her German language skills. Elif reflects that when moved to Germany “because of some political problems in my country,” she had to discontinue her PhD. After gaining some work experience, she plans on finding a place in university to continue her studies in science and technology research. Thanks to partners like BASF, we are able to continue providing language courses and expanding the resources available to meet the linguistic needs of students such as Elif.