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Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Evidence increased mastery of near native-like pronunciation of German orthography
2. Formulate, orally and in writing, statements and questions and interpret responses of other
speakers, using appropriate German vocabulary and basic idiomatic terms related to
common personal and general topics
3. Generate longer utterances and sustain connected discourse with some degree of
spontaneity, referring to past, present, and future endeavors
4. Read and discuss simplified passages on a range of cultural topics and extract specific
information from authentic German texts, including newspaper and magazine articles
5. Control with relative ease: correct usage of subject, direct object and indirect
object nouns and pronouns; present, simple past, perfect and future tenses of
all regular and most irregular verbs; comparative and superlative forms; adjectives
and adverbs and their correct placement in sentences
6. Generate, orally and in writing, two-clause sentences with appropriate conjunctions
7. Demonstrate comprehension of the main idea when listening to German
spoken at native-like speed
8. Respond with increased oral complexity and in culturally appropriate ways
to frequently occurring situations, such as interactions in stores, using public
transportation, dining in restaurants and during gatherings with family, neighbors and friends
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A. Themes and related communicative tasks include:
1. Discussing professions, work and home life, and the activities related to these spheres
2. Analyzing and discussing the German education system versus American paths of schooling
3. Describing childhood and youth, contrasting the unique differences hereto between
American and German customs and experiences
4. Communicating the way things used to be, how they are now, and how they
might be in the future
5. Debating living arrangements and neighborhood structures in Germany compared to the US
6. Reading and musing about German food, cooking and dining habits, both at home
and in restaurants
7. Describing and discussing favorite German travel destinations and comparing the German
vacation system to that of the US
8. Explaining and debating Germany's and the EU's public transportation system
9. Reading and translating classic German fairy tales, such as Rotkäppchen, Hänsel und Gretel
and Rumpelstilzchen
10. Conveying and discussing historical German events, such as the building of the Berlin Wall
and the German reunification of 1990
B. Grammatical elements include:
1. Usage of interrogatives wer, wem, wen according to the German case system
2. Forming sentences containing both direct and indirect object nouns and pronouns
3. Dative verbs, prepositions and pronouns
4. Location versus destination: the two-way prepositions
5. Learning and honing the role of the Simple Past in oral and written narration, such as in
stories, fables or newspaper articles
6. Past Tense of the verbs to have, haben, and to be, sein, and their importance for
conversational German
7. Word order time before place
8. The da-compound and wo-compound
9. Relative clauses
10. Adjectives and their endings according to case, number and gender
11. The comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
12. The Simple Past Tense of regular and irregular verbs
13. Writing paragraphs and short letters using the Simple Past Tense
14. Talking about the future: the Present Tense and the Future Tense
15. Traditional and very contemporary idioms and utterances, such as "geil"
or "Das ist ja der Hammer"
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Kontakte: A Communicative Approach (text, workbook, and lab manual), 6th ed. Terrell,
Tschirner and Nikolai. McGraw Hill, 2009.
Instructor prepared materials
