No previous knowledge of German required, but students should: demonstrate commitment to regular attendance, completion of homework and all assessments; dedicate at least two hours per week for coursework in addition to classes. Students are expected to be experienced language learners with a basic knowledge of English/German grammar terms.
Course Aim:
- To develop the ability to use German effectively for purposes of practical communication at a basic level in familiar domestic, work and social contexts.
- To establish the skills, language and attitudes required to promote and facilitate further study of German. To acquire basic literacy.
- To master the pronunciation of German sounds.
- To have basic knowledge of grammatical gender, word-formation, word-order in the sentence.
- To deal with a range of predictable simple language tasks using a limited range of language to meet the needs of differing but familiar situations and topics.
- To familiarise students with the background to German speaking countries, including culture and civil societies.
- To bring students to level A1/A2 CEFR.
Communicative Content:
- Asking for and giving personal information, directions and opinions.
- Describing people, objects, feelings and places.
- Talking about likes and dislikes, expressing preferences and making comparisons.
- Talking about actions.
- Expressing intentions, ignorance and proposing alternatives.
- Expressing frequency.
- Talking about past events and experiences.
- Talking about habitual actions in the past.
- Talking about festive events, invitations, plans.
- Asking for and giving advice.
Structural Content: Introducing the basics of German grammar in the following areas:
- Grammatical gender and plural of nouns.
- Present tense of regular, modal and some irregular/strong verbs.
- Direct and indirect objects; complements.
- Possessive pronouns.
- Prepositions taking the dative and/or accusative case.
- Present perfect of regular and irregular/strong verbs.
- Frequency adverbs; numbers.
- Combining of Perfect and Präteritum.
- Expressions of time.
- All three forms of the imperative.
- Introduction to subordinate clauses.
16 hours of classes in the MT. 22 hours of classes in the LT. 2 hours of classes in the ST.
This is a 40 hour-course. Please refer to the LSE timetable for course teaching arrangements.
Continuous assessment (70%) in the MT and LT.
Oral examination (30%) in the LT.
Department: Language Centre
Total students 2018/19: 32
Average class size 2018/19: 15