Advanced German: Expanding Perspectives (Language Proficiency)
Speaking and Writing
- Develops students’ ability to carry out sustained discourse in both informal and more formal situations (e.g. oral presentations) on a wide range of concrete topics and current events. Students should be stretched to express and defend points of view, persuade an audience, and discuss more abstract topics.
- Speaking activities include focused practice with more complex structures and syntactical forms (e.g. subordinate and relative clauses, passive and subjunctive) and discourse markers (e.g. “einerseits-andererseits”), short oral reports, longer oral presentations, debates, extended guided discussion.
- Writing activities include Reading Journals / email discussion (informal writing), process essays resulting in 2-3 page formal essays, practicing diverse forms (e.g. autobiographical narrative, newspaper article, film review, parody, narrative).
Reading and Listening
- Literary and non-literary texts from a wide array of media and genre (increased attention to genre and style); increased linguistic and propositional complexity. Focus on form: indirect discourse, extended adjective modifiers, subj. use of modals, etc.
- Extensive Reading: full-length play or novel in each semester with gripping story-line and less complex linguistic / propositional demands.