COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This fourth year of German builds upon the first three levels. Students will continue to sharpen their reading, writing, and listening skills as well as learn skills to think critically and express themselves on topics relevant to German culture. This fourth level will include authentic texts, current culture, and literature from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Every two units will be a special focus on a particular region or city from these areas; these will include such things as culture, tourism, and current events. Students will learn vocabulary, grammar skills, and cultural competency to express themselves on variety of topics in German. Cultural topics include: contemporary and classical music, expressing opinion, German history, transportation, family weekend travel, free time activities, youth and technology, multiculturalism, holidays, education, career, and travel in a foreign country.

PREREQUISITES:

German III

COURSE LENGTH:

Two semesters

REQUIRED TEXT:

None

COURSE OUTLINE:

Going to a Concert (Berlin)

• Culture: Venues in Berlin, Contemporary and Classical music, free time activities
• Skills: Purchasing tickets, making plans, reading song text
• Grammar: Present and future tenses, warden, and making future with time elements

My Opinion (Berlin)

• Culture: White Rose resistance group, German history, activism, current events
• Skills: Stating opinion, sharing personal values
• Grammar: Simple past, present and past perfect

School Trip (Vienna)

• Culture: Transportation by train, travel etiquette, high school, sights in Vienna
• Skills: Asking for directions, purchasing train tickets, travel phrases
• Grammar: Accusative case (all uses of accusative case)

Day in the City (Koln)

• Culture: Going to market, cooking, family activities, health
• Skills: Shopping for groceries, making suggestions, stating likes and dislikes
• Grammar: Genitive and two-way prepositions (all uses of genitive case)

Multicultural Society (Munchen)

• Culture: Heritage, customs, guest worker program, current news on immigration
• Skills: Expressing identify, stating advantages and disadvantages, discussing values
• Grammar: Adjective endings, der/ein words, comparative and superlative

Let’s Celebrate! (Munchen)

• Culture: Holidays, celebrations, multicultural values, stereotypes
• Skills: Describing customs, recognizing stereotypes, drawing comparisons
• Grammar: Word order, negation, independent and dependent clauses

Today’s Youth  (Munchen)

• Culture: Free time activities, technology, TV, movies, internet
• Skills: Sharing interests, making plans, stating preference, persuasion
• Grammar: Relative clauses, relative pronouns, extended modifiers

Education/Career (Gottingen)

• Culture: German secondary education, career opportunities, focus on various schools
• Skills: Expressing future intent and goals, values, weighing decisions
• Grammar: Subjective II, modals in the subjunctive, als, wenn, and wann

Travel with Friends (Nordsee)

• Culture: Travel abroad, at the airport, lodging, backpacking
• Skills: Cross cultural communication, translation, making reservations, backpacking
• Grammar: Subjective I, passive, indirect speech, past subjunctive