Goals
Deutsch
Mittelstufe guides you a collection of twelve lessons
to build and review basic skills, to prepare for travel, study-abroad,
more advanced courses or for a language-competency test in German.
We begin with basic expressions, vocabulary and grammar. You go at
your own pace. Take a lot of time with each lesson or move quickly
through several, cycing back through them repeatedly in order to achieve
a good level of mastery. There are plenty of interesting and challenging
activities to extend your current level of comprehension and fluency.
To develop conversational skills, there's nothing like interaction
with other people, for example in a German classroom or club or by
travelling to a German-speaking country. This course can help you
with everything else: with Deutsch Mittelstufe
you can acquire, review and increase your mastery of German.
Outcomes
-
Working through all the lessons, you will achieve
intermediate proficiency.
You will be able:
- You will have ample passive vocabulary and
depending on your mode of practice, greater active vocabulary.
- Depending on the resources you use and how you practice, you will
also be able:
Concentrate on the skills you wish to improve.
From a wide variety of activities, choose the ones that best address
your goals. Each lesson includes materials for reading, listening, writing
or speaking.
Song texts and links to audio resources tune your ear to the
sound of German.
Reading selections include lyrics, poetry, dialogues, fairy tales,
articles from periodicals, and literature. Most include extensive
German-English vocabularies.
Supplemental activities assist in comprehension, enhance vocabulary
retention and increase your facility with grammar.
-
If you are preparing for travel or study abroad,
choose resources that include sound files, practice aloud, practice
the dialogues, practice the sentences in the exercises aloud and
sing along with the music.
-
If you are preparing for a reading exam, spend less
time on the exercises requiring you to write in German and more
on multiple choice exercises and the song texts and articles supplied
with vocabularies and guiding questions.
-
If you are working on general competence, choose
a good variety of exercises for each goal.
Concentrate on quality, not quantity.
Patience, Practice, Persistence
We learned language as children by repeating everything we heard,
whether we knew what we were saying or not. Eventually we understood
more of what we encountered in speech and in writing and learned how
to recombine what we'd practiced into our own expressions. You must
employ the technique of repetition again in order to learn German.
Now, unlike when you were a child, the advantage is you already have
learned a lot of linguistic tricks: because you know English, you
know how language "works" and can apply that knowledge and
experience to learning German.
Repeat everything.
Repeat aloud. Repeat exercises. Repeat readings. Repeat it whether
you know what you're saying or not. Eventually you will again comprehend
more and be able to recombine words and patterns you've practiced
to express yourself.
It is better to do half the exercises of each lesson and do them
easily than to do all the exercises without learning the vocabulary
and patterns they represent.
Exercises are practice material for learning to read and say each
sentence. They're not about filling in the blanks. Mastering an exercise
is about learning to use that bit of language. Be patient and
persistent. Take your time. Practice frequently.
- Use the answer keys. If an exercise is hard or you can't figure
out what you're supposed to do, read the answer key first. It's not
cheating because exercises are not tests, they are drills to help
you learn and remember words and patterns. There's nothing wrong with
reading the answer key first, but you do want to repeat the exercise
until you can do it easily without referring to the Schlüssel.
-
Guess at the meaning of words, but use the vocabularies
when words you can't figure out are confusing.
-
Read German aloud.
-
Repeat short sentences like "Ich gehe ins
Kino" until you can say them aloud smoothly without looking
at them.
- Repeat exercises again and again.
- The grades on the drills provide feedback for your benefit. No record
is kept of any grades.
- For reading selections: Remember as a child when you read your favorite
book over and over again? Or best of all, when someone else read it
aloud with you? You learned to read by doing it then, and the same
technique will work for you now. Read the texts over and over. Read
aloud as much as you can.
- If you feel like singing along with the Lektion songs, you
should. Lip synch. Karaoke. It's a great way to practice everything:
the vocabulary, grammatical structures, word order, listening skills
and pronunciation, as well as just to enjoy German.
- Space your study sessions. Mix up different kinds of activities
during study time to keep your attention focused and your effort fruitful.
- Stop working or change tasks when your attention is exhausted. You
will understand a reading much better after having slept on it.
How to Use the Lessons
- Read the lesson goals.
- Look over the entire page to get an idea of the resources available.
- Explore the links.
- Use the resources as often as necessary in whatever order works
best for you.
- Repeat the exercises until you have mastered them.
- Print out pages to use when you're away from your computer.
- When you are ready, take
the test for the lesson.
Glossary
of Grammatical Terms
This reference tool will assist you in comprehending
explanations of grammar. It defines terms and gives examples
in English and German. Use as needed.
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