The institute offers a wide range of small seminars with a good tutor-student ratio, and the practical language training is based on modern language-teaching methods. Some of the theoretical classes are also held in the foreign language and their subject matter is often linked to current research projects, which students can also write the final dissertations on. Students who spend part of their degree in a Romance-speaking country can have their academic achievements gained there systematically recognised.

The institute has 26 ERASMUS partnerships with Spanish, French and Italian universities; Student exchange cooperation agreements are in place with universities in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Students have the possibility to do a double degree in Ibero and Italo-Romance studies and a joint degree in the field of Franco-Romance studies. 70 % of the MA The Americas/Las Américas students come from Latin America. Regular international visiting lecturers promote the intercultural dimension in teaching and research.

The institute offers students access to a large number of academic databases (e.g. subject-specific bibliographies, full-text databases, e-journals and e-books), and their use is also systematically integrated into research and teaching. Electronic language corpora are created as part of linguistic research projects, which are used in teaching and are also made available for final dissertations. The electronic media are used via the technical equipment in the seminar and library rooms.

The DFG-funded Heisenberg professorship conducts research projects on the representation of reality in contemporary narratives and on the interaction between literature and the visual arts in early modern times. Other linguistics projects financed by the VW Foundation and the FAU deal with social attitudes towards multilingualism and language contact in the Caribbean of colonial times and the present.

In addition to offering classes for the Romance courses (BA, MA, teacher training), the institute's classes are also an integral part of interdisciplinary degree courses, especially MA courses (e.g. MA Literature – intermedial and intercultural, MA The Americas – Las Américas, MA Linguistics), but also BAs (BA Literature & Book). Conversely, the classes of other BA/MA and teacher training courses can be systematically integrated into the course. The possibility of completing practicals in a Romance-speaking country completes the range of offers of the degree course.