Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Some German Homework - Oh wie schön!

As I struggle a bit with the latest version of Blackboard version 9, which I generally find to be a messy pile of badly written software, I'll update your homework from here for a while. It's entirely possible I might abandon Blackboard. It's a rude piece of software!

Deutsch 1

Review, of course, the basic set of greetings in German
Finish the handout on introducing yourself in German
Revisit the presentation: Wer ist das?? Finish studying it at home.

Now we look at some German Geography!! Here is a map of the 16 German states (Bundesländer). Color it neatly and search the Internet for the GERMAN NAMES of these 16 German states. Label your map clearly. You should color it lightly, because we'll be adding more landmarks to the map (capital cities, major rivers, mountains, regions, etc.)

German names!! Your names are all very nice, but let's reimage ourselves with GERMAN-SOUNDING NAMES. Here is a link with a short history of German first names through the ages. Choose one that you like and can easily pronounce. And peruse a list of common German last names to find one that fits nicely with your chosen German first name.

Deutsch 2
Review your luggage vocabulary and reading about the Hoffmann's travels to America.
Read and study pages 2-9 closely.
write exercises #5 and #6 out fully on sheet of paper.
Comparative and Superlative Forms - exercise

Deutsch 3
Wir beginnen Kapitel 1A - Die Welt! Hier ist eine kurze Übung über dieses Thema und den Dialog, den Sie auf Seite 4 finden können.
Hausaufgabe: Lesen Sie genau Seite 2-9, und machen Sie die Übung fertig. Schreiben Sie Übung 4, Seite 5 völlig aus!
Fragen zur Welt - Geografie, bitte!
ob und dass - subordinating conjunctions
weil - subordinating conjunction


AP Deutsch

Am Freitag sind Ihre ersten Portfolios fällig. Am Dienstag fangen wir mit den Tagesereignissen an. Und hier ist eine kurze Übung über Harry Potter!!

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Welcome Back!

So a new school begins at Enloe, and new hopes and aspirations. I am pretty thrilled about it and I am sure you are also. My goal for this blog this year is to post announcements pertinent to every Enloe German student here: things like articles, German videos, links, pictures related to German-speaking culture. SOme of these posting will become a basis for an assignment or a reaction post to our discussion boards. I'll just say, check kandah.org, and BAM! your posting will be there!

For your convenience I include links here for your course syllabi for German classes at Enloe. You'll need to be able to open Adobe PDF files in order to view many of the files I make available to you all.
  1. German 1
  2. German 2
  3. German 3
  4. German 4
  5. AP German
Blackboard will still be a major component of our classroom. Be sure you can log onto Blackboard. We are using a new version, Blackboard version 9, and you can get to this link from here and from the right-hand side of this page, where a lot og high-frequency links for our course can be found. 

I've been working on a German grammar review book, but still haven't finished it. A work-in-progress draft of this treatise can be found at this link. Remember, this book is copyrighted by yours truly!

Someone at the open house asked about ways to to listen to German broadcasts from home, for instance, while eating, or for background sound. This is an excellent way to create a more immersive environment at home. I would suggest a multitude of Internet resources, streamed from a laptop or tablet of some kind. Here are a few of my favorite German media sources:

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen - ZDF - One of Germany's oldest public networks
Deutsche Welle - excellent source of news, culture, music, etc.

There are others, for example youtube.com channels. Have fun exploring!