German AS -> Feeling lost and need help...

I am doing German AS and I am actually really worried about the exam.

We still haven't done a mock yet and it's already March. I have done quite a few past paper questions but some of them are super hard and I just had to reach for my dictionary...

I am the only person in my class who has never lived in Germany but I am still randomly predicted an A, even though we haven't done anything under exam conditions... I think they just put that on my report because they like me and they would feel bad putting a bad grade. But then again, in lessons I am coping pretty much the same as everyone else, except in some parts where everyone else has an advantage such as being able to guess at some grammar and vocab stuff because 'it just sounds right' to them.

Do you have any tips? Any advice or wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1

schmuur

12

What exactly are you worried about? Is there a certain area of the language which you find more challenging than the rest?

My advice is that you go through a marked practice paper/essay and see in which areas you scored the best and worse (e.g you may have a high level of vocab and good grammar but your ability to organise your ideas isn't so great) If you cannot work this out yourself, go ask a teacher.

Then simply work on your weaknesses. A poor vocabulary can be improved upon by reading newspapers and making flashcards, if you struggle with grammar I'd buy a grammar workbook (try this for example http://www.amazon.co.uk/AQA-German-AS-Grammar-Workbook/dp/1408520125/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1426449686&sr=8-3&keywords=A2+german+grammar ) Sentence structure can be iproved with techniques such as PEEEEE (I'm assuming you know what that is? ) and if you want to become more fluent, I recommend a website called www.conversationexchange.com, where you can practice with native speakers.

P.S. They would not have predicted you an A unless you were capable of getting it, so have confidence in yourself! :smile:

Reply 2

Nisr123

OP

5

Original post by schmuur

What exactly are you worried about? Is there a certain area of the language which you find more challenging than the rest?

My advice is that you go through a marked practice paper/essay and see in which areas you scored the best and worse (e.g you may have a high level of vocab and good grammar but your ability to organise your ideas isn't so great) If you cannot work this out yourself, go ask a teacher.

Then simply work on your weaknesses. A poor vocabulary can be improved upon by reading newspapers and making flashcards, if you struggle with grammar I'd buy a grammar workbook (try this for example http://www.amazon.co.uk/AQA-German-AS-Grammar-Workbook/dp/1408520125/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1426449686&sr=8-3&keywords=A2+german+grammar ) Sentence structure can be iproved with techniques such as PEEEEE (I'm assuming you know what that is? ) and if you want to become more fluent, I recommend a website called www.conversationexchange.com, where you can practice with native speakers.

P.S. They would not have predicted you an A unless you were capable of getting it, so have confidence in yourself! :smile:

Wow thanks. I think its an overall lack of confidence, experience and motivation that's really getting me down. The exam is really daunting because I often don't know enough vocab, and it is virtually impossible to predict what vocab they will use so it seems like I have to just learn ALL the vocab - which is obviously impossible xD

I will take your advice though, thank you. Those resources seem amazing - I have never heard of them before. I assume that although that grammar book is for AQA, it will still be applicable for Edexcel AS German?

(Also, I know what PEE - point, evidence, explanation - and maybe another E could be expand... but what are the other E's in 'PEEEEE')

(edited 9 years ago)

I feel the same

I'm doing A2 at the moment and 3 out of 5 in my German class have lived in Germany, I also do Spanish and regularly get lower marks than the rest. However I learnt my lesson last year and you just have to focus on yourself, setting your own goals and ignoring everyone else. My advice for the exam might sound odd but just think about the question. Give yourself a few minutes to look at the question, read the text and look at what you do understand and approach what you don't logically. Whats good with German is that they love a good compound noun, so even if you don't know the whole word you can often infer the meaning by breaking the word down. I would also recommend if you can learning some key irregular verb conjugations, because often they look completely different in the imperfect tense.

Hope any of that helps! :smile:

Reply 5

RavenclawPolly

3

Original post by Nisr123

I am doing German AS and I am actually really worried about the exam.

We still haven't done a mock yet and it's already March. I have done quite a few past paper questions but some of them are super hard and I just had to reach for my dictionary...

I am the only person in my class who has never lived in Germany but I am still randomly predicted an A, even though we haven't done anything under exam conditions... I think they just put that on my report because they like me and they would feel bad putting a bad grade. But then again, in lessons I am coping pretty much the same as everyone else, except in some parts where everyone else has an advantage such as being able to guess at some grammar and vocab stuff because 'it just sounds right' to them.

Do you have any tips? Any advice or wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Also if you want to listen to more German, I would recommend watching Easy German episodes on youtube they have english and german subtitles I find them really useful. You'd be surprised at the amount of resources on youtube :smile:

Here is the link to their channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/magauchsein/playlists

German AS -> Feeling lost and need help...

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