Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

GER 113A is designed for students who wish to improve their ability to converse in German. Students will have the opportunity to practice the structures and vocabulary they have worked with in their first-year German courses. This course also provides review for students who are entering a second-year German class. This is a three-credit transferable course, and it counts as an elective toward associate degrees.

The student:

1. Communicates using common interactions in variable settings and uses expanded vocabulary, present tense and present perfect tense, simple past, past perfect tenses using all nominative, accusative and dative cases. Has at least a passing knowledge of genitive case.
2. Continues to apply language-learning skills to more varied and complex real-life situations.
3. Develops a deeper appreciation of linguistic and cultural diversity within the German-speaking world.

Students are expected to attend all classes, participate actively in classroom activities, and prepare oral and written homework assignments. Students may meet with the teacher in conferences. After the introduction to the course, German will be used in the classroom at all times. Students should plan to spend one hour in preparation and practice outside of class for each class hour.

Students will be assessed by any combination of the following:

1. Active participation in class in the target language
2. Short individual presentations
3. Short contextual written tasks (in or outside of class)
4. Oral interviews with partner or instructor
5. In-class, interactive student role-plays

Themes:
Include all or some of the following:

1. Travel
2. Clothing and appearance
3. Body parts, health, accidents, and illness; doctors, apothecaries, hospitals
4. Family (expanded), marriage, partnerships
5. Multicultural communities
6. Animals
7. Art and Literature

Concepts and Issues:
Include some of all of the following:

1. Discussing travel plans
2. Talking about clothing, styles, outward appearance
3. Discussing the parts of the body, illnesses and accidents, where to go to get medicine and health care
4. Discussing family relations and relationships
5. Discussing social relationships and issues surrounding modern multicultural societies, with a focus on Germany
6. Discussing German arts, artists, and literature
7. Discussing animals as pets and in proverbs (these concepts are not necessarily presented here in the order presented in class; presentation depends largely on the makeup of the student population in a specific course)

Competencies and Skills:
In a conversational setting the student will:

1. Use dative prepositions to talk about things such as travel and relationships
2. Use indirect questions subordinating conjunctions
3. Ask and give directions using various prepositions
4. Express possibility using "wuerde" + infinitive
5. Begin to use the subjunctive form of modal verbs in polite situations
6. Begin to use dative verbs correctly
7. Have a beginning knowledge of the genitive case
8. Describe cause and purpose using "because", "so that" and "in order to"
9. Review, expand, and further use prepositional compounds
10. Review and use the nominative, accusative and dative cases
11. Expand and review using relative pronouns