Elementary German 1: sprechen und verstehen

What you will study

Almost 100 million people speak German as their main language. Most of them live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, making German one of the most widely used languages in Europe. Now associated with economic success, science and technology, German also has a long-standing reputation as a language of poets and thinkers.

This short course offers you an excellent opportunity to take further your knowledge of the German language. You’ll continue to develop the essentials of reading, writing, speaking and listening in German. You’ll also improve your key skills that will enhance your future study of the language.

By the end of the 16 units of Elementary German 1: sprechen und verstehen you will be able to:

• express your opinions on a variety of themes and topics, such as lifestyle, daily routines, leisure activities, landscapes and geography, and travelling
• use a variety of expressions and types of words, such as adverbs of time and of frequency, prepositions, and comparisons
• master and communicate in typical everyday situations; for example, understanding and responding to train announcements and describing movements
• understand and employ key issues of German pronunciation, especially the sounds alien to non-German speakers, such as Umlaute
• use regular and irregular verbs in the past tense and in imperative forms.

Furthermore, you will have had many opportunities to enhance your intercultural understanding through engaging with learning materials, which reflect German-speaking countries and their people and through learning about places and sightseeing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Delivered through user-friendly, ‘bite-sized’ blocks, in each unit you’ll discover useful words and set phrases. Audio material, featuring recordings by native speakers of German, and a wide variety of speaking activities will aid your pronunciation. Throughout the course, you’ll build up your own German phrase book covering a variety of topics and typical situations. You will also practise using important grammatical features such as the dative case, prepositions, separable verbs, and the past tense.

You will learn and improve your strategies to memorise and use German vocabulary and grammar, as well as practise learning strategies such as skim reading, using fillers, and speaking from key words.

Along with completing the activities and quiz in each unit to strengthen your learning, you’ll have built and developed your own language notebook and gained a solid foundation of elementary German to move onto the next level.

Viel Erfolg, und weiter so!

Please note that although this course is non-accredited, it can be used towards the module Making your learning count (YXM130) to gain OU credits.

You will learn

After completing this course, you should be able to:

• communicate with speakers of German in a range of predictable and simple contexts relating to everyday life
• know and use the principles of German pronunciation
• understand and use the special German characters (Umlaute) and be able to Word-process or handwrite them
• better understand the cultural differences and customs between German-speaking cultures and your own
• correctly build and employ a variety of grammatical structures, such as verb tenses, prepositions, and sentence structure.

The course is designed to help you achieve a level of language proficiency equivalent to level A2 of the Council of Europe Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR).

Regulations