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The GCSE to AS German bridging summer class '13 *Last Edited 29th July*

This poll is closed

Am I covering topics at the right level?

Far too easy- Octopus, stop being so patronisng 25%
About right- I have forgotten stuff since the exams. 75%
Too difficult- what the hell, you expect me to remember any German?0%
Total votes: 4
Various people on TSR want to reinforce the German they learnt at GCSE, ready to progress on to AS-level German this September.

Now, the easy way to do this is to buy the following books, written by people with Bachelors and Masters degrees in German and years of experience in teaching German to hundreds, nay thousands, of students.
Living German
http://www.whsmith.co.uk/Products/Living-German-Unabridged-7th-revised-ed+Mixed-media-product+9781444153910

German Grammar Drills
http://www.whsmith.co.uk/Products/German-Grammar-Drills-2nd-Revised-edition+Paperback+9780071789455

Takers of the easy, sensible route would supplement these books with visits to the German Learners‘ Society, to get advice from the kind, knowledgeable native speakers there.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1549958

So, what’s the hard way, I hear you ask? The hard way is to get a former A2 student, who may or may not have actually passed her A2 exams, to teach you online. Nevertheless, this is the option some members of TSR have chosen. Did I mention she has a similar approach to teaching as Lieutenant Kara Thrace? Yeah.


This thread is aimed at people aiming to do AS-level German in September, so I will be assuming GCSE B-grade or equivalent level of understanding and searching for weak spots. If you are just beginning German, you are welcome to stick around. Seriously! But as I wouldn't know how to actually teach people from scratch anyway, I recommend you buy this book:
Easy German http://www.whsmith.co.uk/Products/Easy-German-Usborne-Easy-Languages-2nd-Revised-edition+Paperback+9781409555544
or the Living German book I linked above.


If you haven’t seen sense yet, let’s get started. I haven’t much time. I have an essay to write.

Let’s find out if you can conjugate regular (otherwise known as weak) verbs in the present tense.
We’ll use sagen- to say

ich sag_
du sag__
er/sie/es sag_
wir sag__
ihr sag_
sie sag__
Sie sag__

Answers

Spoiler



********

Any problems with that? If any of you did, it was probably the ihr form, wasn’t it? For those of you who have not been introduced to this wonderful pronoun, it is the informal second person plural. Another way to put that is “the pronoun you use to speak to more than one du-person at a time”.

An example of usage:
<scene: a German server of an MMORPG I used to be very fond of, before it shut down. A large team is gathered to battle a huge monster>
Leader of team to the rest of the team: Gott im Himmel! Heiler, könnt ihr den Tank nicht sehen!?
Translation: FGS, healers, can’t you see the tank!?

Suggestions for a better thread title will be considered
***********
Directory of topics covered so far:
Page 1
Conjugating regular verbs in the present tense http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43422653&postcount=4
Irregular verbs in the present tense- http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43422841&postcount=5
Modal verbs in the present tense- http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43422848&postcount=6
Identifying subjects and objects; the definite article in nominative and accusative- http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43432820&postcount=10
Practising using the definite article- http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43433030&postcount=12
Personal pronouns, nom. and acc. - http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43440299&postcount=19
Indefinite article, nom. and acc. http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43440308&postcount=20
Page 2
Things that go like the indefinite article ein, nom. and acc. http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43442880&postcount=22
Perfect tense revision; practising using words-that-go-like-ein http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43453977&postcount=30
Revision thus far: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43464757&postcount=34
Explanation of accusative prepositions http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43468051&postcount=38
Practical application of accusative prepositions and the introduction of the dative case http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=43474539&postcount=40
(edited 10 years ago)

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Ich bin das erste hier! :wink:
Ich will sehr gern besser Deutsch lernen!! :awesome:
(edited 10 years ago)
Octopus' fabelhafte GCSE to AS German bridging summer class '13

Are you going to mark me in on the class register, oder? :wink:
(edited 10 years ago)
It’s time to practise some more regular verbs in the present tense. For those of you who can’t remember the previous example, and are also incapable of scrolling up, here’s a worked example of the present tense machen- to do, make:
ich mache
du machst
er/sie/es macht
wir machen
ihr macht
sie machen
Sie machen
Now, try that with öffnen- to open, and kaufen- to buy.

Spoiler



Here are some sentences. I want you to complete the gaps with the appropriately conjugated from of the verb in brackets. If you can stomach it, it will be a lot better for your mind if you can actually type or write the sentence out in full, because then you start developing muscle memory for German.

Example sentence:
Das Meerschweinchen ______ unter meinem Bett (wohnen)
Das Meerschweinchen wohnt unter meinem Bett.
The guinea-pig lives under my bed.

1) Olly und Stefan! Wo ____ ihr ? (gehen)
2) Meine Schwester _____ Schlangen (lieben)
3) Die Königin von England _____ noch einen Corgi. (kaufen)
4) Meine Eltern ________ ein türkisfarbenes Auto. (brauchen)
5) Der Junge ____ einen neuen Computer. (bauen)

Spoiler

(edited 10 years ago)
Readers, I am delusionally presuming that you have successfully revised how to form the present tense with weak verbs. So, now, we will amble on.

Some verbs are irregular in the present tense. Does this sound familiar at all? (If you took GCSE with AQA as an exam board, there are verb tables on page 189 of the AQA students’ book. I advise that you not only read these, but that you also read the entire grammar section) An example is geben- to give.

ich gebe
du gibst
er/sie/es gibt
wir geben
ihr gebt
sie geben
Sie geben

Look at the table above carefully. What’s changed?
The endings remained the same, but the vowel sound changed in the stem in the second- and third-person singular. So, if a verb is irregular in the present tense, it means there is a sound change in the du-form and the er/sie/es form.

If I tell you that the vowel sound in sehen to see will change from e to ie, can you write or type it out? This verb will become very important to you in September!
******

You should have written:

Spoiler

(edited 10 years ago)
And now I’d like to remind you of the existence of modal verbs.
Can you remember all six?

Spoiler



And now, can you conjugate them in the present tense?

Spoiler



Can you see the parallel to be drawn with the irregular verbs which we looked at just now? Like the previous verbs, there is a vowel change in the stem in the second- and third-person singular. But modal verbs are special; they change the vowel sound in the first-person singular too!

An exercise to practise applying modal verbs.

Complete the gaps with the appropriately conjugated form of the verb in brackets.
1) Du _____ den Keks essen (müssen)
2) Ich ____ diese Aufgabe machen. (sollen)
3) Klasse 11B, _____ ihr die Prüfungen bestehen? (wollen)
4) Frau Ärztin, ____ ich zwei Schmerztabletten haben, bitte? (können)
5) Peter ___ Geschenke. (mögen)
6) _____ ihr die Schlafzimmer aufräumen (können)
7) Sabine, ______ du mit mir ins Kino gehen? (wollen)
8) ____ das Kind schon lesen? (können)
9) Ihr _____ diesen neuen Film ansehen. (sollen)
10) ______ Kinder in dieser Schule Fremdsprachen lernen (können)
11) ____ Herr Michael Gove zürucktreten? (sollen)
12) Draco, _____ du Muggeln? (mögen)
13) Draco antwortet: „Nein, ich ___ sie nicht!“ (mögen)
14) Ihr _____ recyceln. (müssen)
15) Wir ______ Energie sparen. (müssen)
16) Mein Bruder ____ Deutsch lernen (sollen)

Spoiler

(edited 10 years ago)
Gern sehe ich dies :pierre:
Original post by Octopus_Garden
[another reserve post]


Miss Octopus, what time does *live* lesson start?
I will only get myself on my laptop for good reason...:wink:
Heeeeey, I'm guessing you don't want me here but :ahee:
I have now stockpiled enough walls :banghead:, so now we’re going to progress on to something a tad more important than ihr. It is theoretically possible to get an A* at A-level without knowing how to conjugate verbs into their informal 2nd person-plural, because it doesn’t come up much. It’s exceedingly unlikely that the situation would ever occur, because I can’t imagine who on earth would be able to master all the rest of German grammar beyond ihr-forms, and have enough spoken and aural fluency to do brilliantly in the speaking and listening components, but yet be unable to master ihr.

However the subject of this post is something far more fundamental. This topic is more of a Go Straight To Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200 type.

That’s right. We are now going to cover subjects and direct objects. Being able to distinguish between subjects and direct objects is important in making yourself understood in German, French, Latin and… English. Yes, that’s right. It’s not just something other languages do. And those are just the languages I happen to have some passing knowledge of. While I am not a qualified linguist, I suspect that the phenomenon is not confined to those four languages- needing to know whether someone is telling you that “the neighbour attacked the dog” or “the dog attacked the neighbour” is important everywhere!

If you are following this thread with the aim of taking AS-level German this September, I think I can safely assume you are a fluent speaker of English. This means that you can instinctively form sentences which incorporate subjects and objects, even though English, as a proud aspirant to the Most Illogical Language Ever award, uses two different methods. So, I am not going to accept “I can’t do it” as an excuse. “I can’t do it” is code for “I can’t be bothered to think about it instead of doing it instinctively” or “I have convinced myself I can’t do it”!

Verbs are doing-words.
The subject is the person or thing performing the action/doing the verb.
The object is the person or thing to which the verb is being done.
In English, we usually, but not always, distinguish the subject and the object solely by means of word order or position in the sentence.

The cat loves the Queen.
The Queen loves the cat.
The above sentences use exactly the same five words, but they each mean something quite different, don’t they?

Here’s another set of examples. This time, I’ve labelled the parts of the sentence with S for subject, V for verb, and O for object.


The bird (s) eats(v) the spider(o).

The spider(s) eats(v) the bird(o).
Both sentences mean something quite different, and as both situations are quite possible1, our language needs to be able to capable of communicating both.

Now, here are some sentences. Identify the subject and the object for yourselves.

1) Winnie the Pooh eats honey.
2) The poet is writing a poem.
3) The engineer designs a bridge
4) The child does an essay.
5) The audience is watching the film contentedly.
6) The little girl loves the seaside.
7) The troll insults a forum-user
8) The serial killer composes a taunting note.
9) The teenagers drink cheap cider.
10) The princess rescues the grey knight in dingy armour.

Spoiler



Assuming you’ve now got the hand of what a subject and an object are, let’s go on to the other English method of distinguishing them. Cases! These days, after hundreds of years of linguistic change and what-not, the modern English language only retains cases for pronouns, whereas the consistent German language uses cases for practically everything.

Today, we will be doing the nominative case, which is used for the subject of a sentence, and the accusative, which is used for the object of a sentence.

First person pronoun
Nominative-I
Accusative-me

Third person pronoun, masculine
Nominative- he
Accusative- him

Third person pronoun, feminine
Nominative- she
Accusative- her

Here are some English sentences.
Identify the appropriate pronouns.
1) She/Her listened to the radio.
2) Frederick asked him/he to marry him.
3) He/Him bought the balloon.
4) Him/He resigned from his position as manager of Manchester United.
5) She/Her loves the dinosaur t-shirt.
6) I/Me shot the sheriff
7) Geraldine hates he/him, because his mobile phone rang during her piano recital.
8) That blouse suits she/her.
9) I/Me love ice cream.
10) He hit I/me with a giant animatronic ladybird.

Spoiler


In German

First-person singular
Nominative- ich (I)
Accusative- mich (me)

Second person singular (informal)
Nominative- du
Accusative- dich

Third person pronoun, masculine
Nominative- er
Accusative- ihn

Third person pronoun, feminine
Nominative- sie
Accusative- sie

So far, so similar-to-English. But now we reach the crux of this post. You should already be aware (surely?)that German has three genders of noun: masculine, feminine and neuter, and thus different forms of definite article.

Well, the definite article is inflected according to whether the noun is the subject or the object of the sentence. But before you feel overwhelmed, only the masculine changes form between the nominative and accusative. However, quite a lot of nouns are masculine, so you cannot hope to avoid them all over the next two years.

Gen: Masc. Fem. Neuter

Nom. der die ---- das
Accu-> den die ----- das

In the plural, it is
nom: die
acc: die

for everything, regardless of gender. Never say the German language doesn't do you any favours!


Original post by L'Evil Fish
Heeeeey, I'm guessing you don't want me here but :ahee:
You can stay.

1 Another term for tarantula is bird-eating spider and some of them can, like the Goliath-bird-eating-spider. Although apparently they tend to prefer things like small snakes.:eek: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/invertebrates/facts/factsheets/goliathbirdeatingtarantula.cfm
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by Octopus_Garden
You can stay.


Danke.

(what's thank you (very much))
sonic-der-irre-igel.jpg

Now you’ve got the hang of that, let’s try an exercise in German. Complete the sentence with the word in brackets. Pay attention to both the gender (indicated by the initial m, f, or n) of the noun provided, and the noun’s role in the sentence.
Example: Der alte Seemann hasst ___ ___________ (Albatros, m)
Solution: Der alte Seemann1 hasst den Albatros
Translation: the old sailor hates the albatross.

1) Sonic der irre Igel sammelt ___ ____. (Ring, m)
2) ___ _______ nimmt Drogen. (Dichter, m)
3) Die Katze öffnet ___ _______.(Fenster, n)
4) Der Lehrer hält ___ ____ .(Buch, n)
5) Ich brauche ___ ____.(Kuli ,m)
6) Die Maus reitet ___ ____ .(Hund, m)
7) ___ _________ isst sein Essen. (Kaninchen, n)
8) Er liebt ___ _________. (Kellnerin, f)

Spoiler




Original post by L'Evil Fish
Danke.

(what's thank you (very much))
Vielen Dank works.

1 I suppose if you wanted to be poetic, you could translate it as ancient mariner...:wink:
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by Octopus_Garden
Vielen Dank works.


Vielen dank :wink:
Original post by L'Evil Fish
Vielen dank :wink:


Very Dutch ^^
You refused to capitalize "Dank" despite it being right infront of you!
Perhaps Dutch is a more suitable language for you, there is a thread a few threads down that might be to your interest! :wink:
Original post by thatitootoo
Very Dutch ^^
You refused to capitalize "Dank" despite it being right infront of you!
Perhaps Dutch is a more suitable language for you, there is a thread a few threads down that might be to your interest! :wink:


Thank is a noun... Oops :redface:
Original post by L'Evil Fish
Thank is a noun... Oops :redface:


it was a happy accident /:tongue:
Original post by thatitootoo
it was a happy accident /:tongue:


Happy und an accident?:lol:
Original post by L'Evil Fish
Thank is a noun... Oops :redface:


Not always :tongue:

(just in case you would be confused :mmm:)
I’d like to finish off the concept of nominative and accusatives this week. For now, at least. We may return to it in the weeks to come.

pronouns.GIF

Above this line, you should be able to click on an image of a table I made. This table shows the nominative forms and accusative forms of some pronouns. If you can’t see it, find your GCSE textbook, or revision guide. I assure you they’ll be in there as well!

So, let’s practice accusatives and nominatives again! In the following exercise, you should complete the German sentences with the correct pronouns.

1) He is reading the newspaper.
__ liest die Zeitung.
2) The boy sees her.
Der Junge sieht ___.
3) I’m buying this book.
___ kaufe dieses Buch.
4) Mr Schmidt, can you help me please?
Herr Schmidt, können ___ mir helfen, bitte?
5) John and Janet, my sister hates you.
John und Janet, meine Schwester hasst ____
6) She wears a beautiful pearl necklace.
___ trägt eine schöne Perlenkette.
7) Etta, do you have to buy another umbrella?
Etta, musst __ noch einen Regenschirm kaufen?
8) Can you see him?
Kannst du ___ sehen?
9) I find the library card.
___ finde den Leserausweis.
10) The cat likes me.
Die Katze mag ____.

Spoiler

(edited 10 years ago)
We’ve done the definite article and pronouns. Time to do the indefinite article now.

Masculine
Nom- ein
Acc- einen

Feminine
Nom- eine
Acc- eine

Neuter
Nom- ein
Acc- ein

As ein/eine/ein translates as a(n) or one, there is no plural of ein, because it wouldn’t make sense. If you don’t believe me, say the following out loud, “one book, two books, three books, a books”! Makes your brain hurt, doesn’t it?

Now, let’s repeat an exercise from earlier, but this time, using the indefinite article.


1) Sonic der irre Igel sammelt ___ ____. (Ring, m)
2) ___ _______ nimmt Drogen. (Dichter, m)
3) Die Katze öffnet ___ _______.(Fenster, n)
4) Der Lehrer hält ___ ____ .(Buch, n)
5) Ich brauche ___ ____.(Kuli ,m)
6) Die Maus reitet ___ ____ .(Hund, m)
7) ___ _________ isst sein Essen. (Kaninchen, n)
8) Er liebt ___ _________. (Kellnerin, f)

Spoiler

(edited 10 years ago)

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