Beginner 1 German (Intensive)

This course is designed for the beginner student with no prior knowledge of German. It aims to develop your communicative competences in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The book Netzwerk A1 and additional material, which is primarily dealing with cultural and historical aspects of German(y), will help you develop your individual language skills. One of the foci of the course is placed on Berlin and its surroundings. Therefore, you will work with authentic material in class and on course-related excursions. By the end of this course, you will be able to deal with various everyday situations in a German-speaking environment and to conduct simple conversations. You will have developed reading strategies that allow you to gather specific information from factual texts, newspaper and magazine articles, and short literary texts. In addition, you will learn to write and revise short texts and, by doing so, assemble metalinguistic knowledge. Finally, you will be able to understand discussions on familiar topics.

Textbook

Netzwerk A1 („Kursbuch“ and „Arbeitsbuch“) by Stefanie Dengler et al., Klett Stuttgart 2017; authentic/original material

Topics

Greetings – Introducing oneself – hobbies
In the city – means of transportation – sights – numbers
In the restaurant – eating/drinking – shopping
Daily routine – telling time/appointments – work and studies
Friends, acquaintances – leisure activities – character traits
Living arrangements – furniture

Structures

personal pronouns (accusative/dative) – possessive articles – sentence structure – nouns and articles – verbs: conjugation, government, prefix – declension of articles und adjectives (nominative/accusative), negation – prepositions with dative/accusative – prepositions of place – prepositions of time – perfect tense – simple past of haben and sein – interrogative “Welch-?” – verbs with dative/accusative