GERM10004: German 1

Definitely easier than the final exam, but not exactly a walk in the park, especially if you're underprepared or don't remember what you've been taught. It tests everything you've been taught in all the tutes beforehand, including what's on the culture sheets (they can ask you anything from those sheets, but it's about 3% of the MST, so if you're pressed for time, ignore them). Try and complete every exercise from the first three chapters, and do some solid vocabulary revision, and you should be able to pull an H1 on the midsem. Importantly, get your sentence structures down pat - the sentence building on the MST was fairly tricky in some cases, and was also worth quite a lot. The written piece is daunting but fairly easy to score well in if you exhibit competency with the manipulation of the language (as opposed to showing off perfect grammar). This was by far my worst attempt at a written piece and I still did well on it. The MST also gets marked quite generously, so if you've attempted all the questions with some degree of understanding it's not going to be hard to H1. I managed a 62/80 and my MST was seriously covered with mistakes. Don't expect a full mark off for every little error you make (if that was the case I'd probably have gotten about 50%).

Ridiculously easy if you can grasp what the people speaking on the recorded tape are saying. Listen to the textbook CD conversations for a night or two and these will be a breeze. Each one has one somewhat tricky question, so pay attention and think about what the speakers are saying. Everyone seemed to do pretty well on these, and it's legitimately easy to score the full 10% if you're on the ball.

These assignments are your gateway to a free 13-15%, if you're careful and meticulous with correction and put in a little bit of effort. They take an hour or two to complete, but aren't particularly hard if you know what you're doing. Like the vocabulary tests, these cover a veritable smorgasbord of topics and a large amount of content, but focus primarily on grammar and writing, as opposed to vocabulary and noun usage. There are a large number of questions at the beginning of each homework sheet that only require a single word to answer, so if you're careful with your responses you'll probably be able to score very well on these. Towards the end there will be a short writing task, and be aware that FLUENCY IS WEIGHTED FAR MORE THAN ACCURATE GRAMMAR. Be INTERESTING, try and stretch your imagination and think of ways to spice up what is probably the most boring and robotically presented German passage your tutors are ever going to have to read, throw in a noun you haven't been taught if your limited vocabulary is failing you. These writing passages were most people's downfall because they wrote a short, safe grammatically sound passage. Also, if you get an ambiguous prompt, write about a bunch of things relating to any nouns in the prompt and you should get a good mark (speaking from experience).
Overall, these homework tasks are pretty easy to do well on, and you don't have much to worry about (I got 99/100, 59/60 and 55.5/60 and I promise I made more than one mistake on all of them).

Don't be fooled by their low weighting; preparing well for these vocabulary tests will really help with the rest of the coursework/exam, and in addition, if you don't study well, these tests are really quite difficult (despite their simple layout).Every now and then, you'll be told you have a vocab test during a tute in the upcoming week. These tests cover pretty much all vocab from

Each component will be covered below :3

German 1 was a very fast-paced but quite comprehensive introduction to the German language. Don't take this subject if you want an easy and laid-back breadth or Arts subject, but DO take it if you're interested in the language of German and area of Europe in which it is spoken, or feel that German could significantly aid your job prospects in the future (apparently useful for people in careers such as business, engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, music composition/history/performance, literature, classical studies, European history, physics, mathematics and other such things). This course progresses QUICKLY, so be sure to stay somewhat on top of things. I felt that my tutor explained everything well, albeit briefly, and in such a way that the textbook acted as a perfect complement to the taught material. Lots of worksheets, dialogue sheets and textbook exercises were set in class or as homework for practice with the language (though be aware that there is NO oral examination in German 1 despite the speaking practice) and if you actually put the effort in, the following tutorial would usually make sense. Feedback was given on each assessment, so improving and fixing mistakes you had previously made was very easy to do. The only real downside to this subject was the sheer volume of vocabulary that is assumed knowledge and is not taught in class (usually). USE QUIZLET IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THINGS AND DO WELL, SERIOUSLY. There are about 1200 core words to learn, and a few hundred more if you include those only found on worksheets and throughout the textbook chapters 1-5. Don't neglect the long or obscure words on the vocabulary lists, because they WILL pop up without prior warning and when you least expect them to. Also pay attention to the culture component of the course; 11% of the exam this year was based on culture, as well as a small component of the mid-semester test. Overall, this subject was well coordinated and well taught, but was no walk in the park with its frequent assessments, fast-paced delivery and large vocabulary load. If you stay on top of things, the semester assessments will reward you with good marks, and any problems you have can be easily resolved with the aid of the tutor during tutor-independent work time (during class or via email outside of class). If you're looking for an introduction to the powerful language of Germany and Austria (Switzerland doesn't really count, as you will eventually discover), this subject is definitely for you, but if you're looking for an easy H1, go take something like MULT10011 instead. Viel Glück und auf wiedersehen!

I have one thing to say about this exam: RUDE. On first glance it appears quite simple, and they're not exactly asking you to write much, but it's HARD. Probably the most difficult thing I had to do all semester (vocab tests were easy in comparison, I just didn't study well for them at all), and my friends' thoughts echoed mine. A girl I met outside the REB after the exam, who'd gotten something like a 95 for the semester's assessment, was 100% confident she'd failed to get an H1 on the exam. I felt pretty demoralised after the exam as well, despite having a pretty good crack at everything they threw at me and revising my vocabulary and grammar like there was no tomorrow. The paper was really WEIRD, and I don't even know why. Please study hard for this exam if you have the time!
The exam had a number of sections, and was marked out of 100 (I don't think the staff were very lenient with their marking, either).
Tasks included English->German translations to complete a passage, writing a letter (quite difficult, actually), recalling some food nouns (I'd wager the category of nouns they ask for changes every year), lots of conjugations, answering accusative/nominative-based fill-in-the-blanks questions, personal pronoun recollection, passage analysis (T/F questions), manipulation of separable verbs and the conversational past, rewriting English sentences in the forms of certain imperatives (wir, du, ihr, and Sie-imperatives) and answering a menagerie of culture-based questions in German (!!! READ OVER ALL YOUR CULTURE SHEETS, SRSLY). Good luck, this assessment is NOT easy, even if you've studied extensively.

No lectures! The tutorials have an 80% attendance requirement, too, so don't expect to be skipping classes like you might for a lecture.

None, but my tutor was Leonetta Leopardi. Very kind woman, and very helpful, but she'll leave you behind in the tutes if you don't pay attention. Also quite generous with marking if she can see that you understand what the question is asking and have some kind of idea what you should be doing. Don't do it on purpose, but if you're late and miss an in-class assessment, she'll probably arrange for you to sit it after the tutorial so you don't miss out on precious marks.

No sample exams, no exam-oriented revision exercises (save for some random sheets that had nothing to do with the exam), no nothing.

4 out of 5

Begegnungen. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Integriertes Kurs- und Arbeitsbuch.
Sprachniveau A1+. Anne Busch and Szilvia Szita. Schubert-Verlag: Leipzig.

This book is basically an all-German workbook, but it strangely works /extremely/ well as a textbook, particularly if you've paid attention in class and look up words you don't know. Use it as much as you can, it'll help immensely. (It goes without saying that the book is also 100% compulsory.)

2 x 2 hour tutorials, and probably about the same amount of time per week revising the content if you don't want to do it all in a block before each assessment (which is perfectly doable).

2013, Semester One.

H1 (89)