German gcse

I was wondering if I should take my german gcse privately. I dont know any german and Im in year 10 so I was unsure whether it was difficult or not.

Original post by Studious155

I was wondering if I should take my german gcse privately. I dont know any german and Im in year 10 so I was unsure whether it was difficult or not.

It will be difficult, yes, like any other language you learn. Do you need to necessarily take German? will it benefit you?

Reply 2

Studious155

OP

13

Original post by Hazzabear

It will be difficult, yes, like any other language you learn. Do you need to necessarily take German? will it benefit you?

Well I guess there is a benefit that I travel to switzerland and have cousins there who speak german. but apparently swiss german and german are completely different. The other benefits would be it looks good on a uni application or its a skill that can be used. Aside from the obvious ones there isnt many. its more a passion that I know i'll never be able to make time for unless I do the gcse.

Original post by Studious155

Well I guess there is a benefit that I travel to switzerland and have cousins there who speak german. but apparently swiss german and german are completely different. The other benefits would be it looks good on a uni application or its a skill that can be used. Aside from the obvious ones there isnt many. its more a passion that I know i'll never be able to make time for unless I do the gcse.

If you think it's worthwhile, then possibly go for it.

Reply 4

Qualms&Facepalms

6

I’m not an expert but Swiss German and German are not different languages. Swiss has a funny accent and a (slightly?) different dialect, which I guess could confuse the examiner. You could do German gcse at your school and see if they could enter you to do it a year early with the year 11s. I hope this helps😀

Reply 5

Studious155

OP

13

Original post by Qualms&Facepalms

I’m not an expert but Swiss German and German are not different languages. Swiss has a funny accent and a (slightly?) different dialect, which I guess could confuse the examiner. You could do German gcse at your school and see if they could enter you to do it a year early with the year 11s. I hope this helps😀

Yeah it does. Thanks for the help. :smile:

Reply 6

Liepaja278

11

Original post by Studious155

I was wondering if I should take my german gcse privately. I dont know any german and Im in year 10 so I was unsure whether it was difficult or not.

most people doing gcse german have already done the basics for 2 years and even then many people didnt do so well.
just get a german tutor, u dont need the gcse to be good at it

Reply 7

Studious155

OP

13

Original post by Nitnendo

most people doing gcse german have already done the basics for 2 years and even then many people didnt do so well.
just get a german tutor, u dont need the gcse to be good at it

Thanks. that makes sense

Reply 8

beret

7

Original post by Studious155

I was wondering if I should take my german gcse privately. I dont know any german and Im in year 10 so I was unsure whether it was difficult or not.

I did my French GCSE self-taught, it's totally manageable as long as you put aside the time and commit to putting in the work. Of course it's difficult, moreso as you say because you don't know any German. Maybe take a year to learn all your tenses and basic vocab, and then do the GCSE content over 2 years? Get a standard textbook and just work through.

Reply 9

username2257577

5

Just wanted to say I'm swiss and I speak swiss german and I did german GCSE. Unless you are fluent in swiss german, it will not help you to know swiss german because they are actually very different.
The grammar and words are very different. For example to say work in German is 'arbeiten' whereas in swiss it is 'schaffen'.
If you don't know any german then don't do it- German is a hard language to learn in just 2 years.

Reply 10

beret

7

Original post by pieena

Just wanted to say I'm swiss and I speak swiss german and I did german GCSE. Unless you are fluent in swiss german, it will not help you to know swiss german because they are actually very different.
The grammar and words are very different. For example to say work in German is 'arbeiten' whereas in swiss it is 'schaffen'.
If you don't know any german then don't do it- German is a hard language to learn in just 2 years.

just out of interest that's really cool, I'm always surprised how different 'variants' (I know that's not quite right) of German can be. I stumbled upon a wikipedia page written in Bavarian once and that was quite something