Mrs Doris Hermann-Ostrowski

Mr Florian Fischer

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.

• DaF kompakt neu A1, Kursbuch und Arbeitsbuch & 2 CDs (Ernst Klett Publishers) 2016, ISBN: 978-3-12-676313-4.

Continuous assessment (70%) in the MT and LT.
Oral examination (30%) in the LT.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.