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AS German Meltdown

Hi I've just started doing AS German in Year 12. I got an A* at GCSE, but the jump is so big. Can anyone tell me how I can improve? I can't do the spontaneous speaking thing and everyone seems so far ahead of me!

Please help!
Thanks
:smile:
Reply 1
The jump is massive, but don't panic! Everyone feels like that at the start, remember that A level is way more intense than GCSE because you're doing more hours but it means that you improve faster too. Focus on improving one step at a time - doing small amounts of vocab each day is helpful, and try and go over the grammar so you feel secure with it as you go along. Watching a short news clip each day can help too, but I would say the main thing is to find something you're interested in and read about it in German. If you like music, there are loads of radio stations to listen to online/on apps, same with TV, and YouTube is great for resources. I would say that by the end of AS very few people can actually speak German fluently, it's just that by the speaking exam you will know so many good phrases and have so much topical information that you will sound fairly fluent in certain areas.
Does that help slightly?


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following on from sian's advice, learn the main grammatical rules (word order, nom. acc. dat. gen. etc, adjective endings, certain verbs take certain cases (i.e. helfen + dat.)- this is absolutely crucial, as spontaneity will go out of the window if you keep having to decide if a word sends the verb to the end, etc.

I would also recommend you learn the irregular verb conjugation, as well as all of the tenses (prasens, imperfekt, konjunktiv 1, konjunktiv 2, you know the deal) - these are the bane of one's existence in A level German! There is no pattern - to the irregular verbs (obviously :biggrin:) (we once tried to group them using vowels - ie verbs etc - and ended up with about 25 groups - not really that helpful) but once you know them off by heart your spontaneity will increase dramatically!

Learn essay phrases and opinion phrases (wenn es nach mir ginge, + cond.) etc etc and practise your essay technique,

Finally buy this little gem of a book Wort fur Wort (Mot a Mot as well if you study French) and learn a little a day on the relevant topics you're studying. (it is also important that you use this vocab in your write-ups) - if you're not told to write answers to questions on the topics I would 100% recommend that you do so individually - should you need the questions they are available on TSR but I can provide you with them if you wish- it helps you build up vocab; my teachers always said the best way to learn a languages is to apply it - same goes with vocab; you won't learn something half as fast if you do an overly contrived 'vocab test' compared to if you use them naturally in your write ups.)

Hope all of this helps - I personally found German extremely overwhelming at the start of AS - and I had the luxury of studying two languages so I could draw parallels and use one to improve the other - but stick with it and you will come out with an AS/A level that is extremely valued by employers, not just for the language skills but for others, such as problem solving, etc.

Hope this helps!
Reply 3
I'm also doing As Level German but something which helped me bridge the gap between GCSE and A Level was either through writing in German on on-line forums or just through thinking in German, translating as people speak to me to German or just using a medium such as Skype to talk to Germans who will correct you whenever you make a mistake, and I mean whenever!

But also because I did this through GCSE it helped that I had already started learning the cases and adjectival declinations, pronoun changes etc.

The key part is knowing enough vocabulary and grammar, as well as getting over the initial anxiety of speaking a different language and just speak! A key skill that you will need to develop is described well in an analogy of my teacher. It's called the "Word Wall", as soon as you come to a word that you don't know how to say, you need to climb over the word using other words to mean the same thing, like doing sports, it is hard at first but as you practice it, you become quicker at it and you become more confident in doing it until it's just a natural thing for you!

Hope this helps!

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