German learners' society

Guten morgen!

First off, this is my first post on this thread and I hope I'm not repeating a question that has been asked time and time again. I did do a few searches before I posted but couldn't find a whole lot of information. If this has been covered before please feel free to delete this.

I'm looking to most likely self-teach AS to A-Level German.
Why? As silly as this sounds it is one of my biggest regrets that I did not take it at A-Level when I was in school. I think I feel as though I have a point to prove which is why I am looking at taking AS/A-level rather than just an evening class.

I was wondering if anyone has anyone has any experience of doing this? I gained an A* at GCSE (albeit 9 years ago!), took a post-GCSE course as an elective whilst at university and have done another academic year of evening classes, so I'm not too sure where my level is at the moment.

I was hoping to be able to go to evening classes at the local grammar school which is a language specialist college but they have told me they do not have enough students to offer the AS this year.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Ja, 'apt' trifft es noch am ehesten... 'Sinnig' bedeutet im Prinzip daß etwas logisch einen Sinn ergibt, in einer bestimmten Situation treffend ist, bzw das ist was man logischerweise erwarten würde. 'Das klingt sinnig' bedeutet mehr oder weniger 'That makes sense'.

Normalerweise würdest du es weniger bei Personen verwenden als bei Organisationen etc, also zum Beispiel "Von Seiten der Regierung wurde bis jetzt noch keine Stellungnahme zu dieser Meldung abgegeben". Es ist ein bißchen förmlich und wird im Alltag eigentlich kaum verwendet.

Hey why are there so many words that mean death/dying?

Töten/Umbringen/Sterben/Erledigen/Verrecken etc.....haha, the Germans obsessed with death? :P

They just have a lot of words I think. Applies to a lot of the language.

Which makes it annoying to learn...all those words were in one page. I was reading this article..and its almost like every-time they wanted to say oh I will kill you or, my family died or something like this, there was always a different word..and every-time I would get confused...I mean now I know, but before I was thinking there cant be this many words for one thing surely?
Mah' German is interesting :P

Your level of German sounds good, you're probably about AS/A2 level now. Are there any other colleges in the area you could apply to? If not, you might be better using AS material like past papers/textbooks with free online resources and films etc to get you up to standard for next year. I doubt you'd have any problem then in terms of academic standards =) x

Hey guyssssss
I'm thinking of doing an Extended Project to go along with my A-Level grades (just to give me something extra) and I want to do it on something to do with german history/culture/development of the german language or something (I want to do German at Uni).

Any ideas of the sort of questions/topics I could write an essay that would be good to show to a Uni that I've done?

Quote meee

Thanks in advance
xx

I did a module on the development of the German language and it was really interesting so I'd definitely recommend that. If you want to do history you could maybe pick a figure and write about them or pick something cultural which is region specific?

Yeah I'v'e decided to do the development of the german language cos it does seem as though it could be really interesting
Do you have any materials or websites or anything I could use?

Unfortunately my notes are at home. You might be able to have a look at some decent books on Google Books. I think a lot have the German language in the title.

Aww fair enough
What sort of resources did you use? Was it mainly books and websites sort thing?

(sorry for all the questions, I just don't know where to start! )

It was an exam so we didn't use any websites, it was all books. If I have a minute I'll see if I can find some online which we used.

I found out today that irgendwo, irgendwas etc mean "some/any where, thing" but is there a different way for saying someone as in someone in particular as opposed to a someone the exact identity of which is not yet decided?

i.e. In English we would say, "has anyone/someone taken my bag?" but only "someone has taken my bag". In German would you use irgendwer for the first and the second or something else for the second?

Actually that doesn't necessarily imply that the identity of the someone isn't unknown, it only allows for the possibility that it may not be unknown, if that makes any sense.
The German equivalent to that would be 'jemand' (rather than 'irgendjemand'), which has the same implied ambiguity concerning the exact identity of the person in question.

Anyway so in the first instance you would use irgendwer/jemand? but in the second just jemand? Okay good