Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

GER 201 is offered for four hours of transferable credit. It meets four hours per week and is the first term of a three term sequence which equals one full year of German. This course satisfies part of the foreign language requirement for the B.A. degree, counts as an elective for the A.A. degree, and contributes to the general education requirement for other associate degrees.
 

Upon successful completion students should be able to:

1. Handle a limited number of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations.
2. Communicate using significant repetition, rephrasing, and circumlocution with native speakers accustomed to dealing with non-native
speakers.
3. Write using paragraph-length connected discourse to narrate and describe in present, past and future time frames with limited accuracy.
4. Recognize and interpret some cultural behaviors and attitudes within the German-speaking world in relation to one’s own cultural perspective.
5. Further analyze historical and cultural movements in the target culture in relation to key works of art, literature, music, film and/or performing arts.
6. Further develop and apply strategies for analyzing and responding to limited authentic materials in the target language.

Students are expected to attend all classes, participate actively in classroom activities, and prepare oral and written homework assignments. Students may meet with the teacher in conferences. After the introduction to the course, German will be used in the classroom at all times. Students should plan to spend two hours in preparation and practice outside of class for each class hour.

Students may be assessed by any combination of the following:

1. Active participation in the target language
2. Short individual or partner presentations
3. Frequent contextual written tasks (in or outside of class) to assess reading, writing, cultural and aural competencies
4. Oral interviews with partner or oral tests with the instructor
5. In-class, interactive student role-plays

1. Personal data (expanded)
2. Greetings, introductions, and leave-takings (expanded)
3. Word order
4. Present, present perfect, simple past and past perfect tenses of verbs
5. Cases and declensions
6. Articles and possessive words
7. Review of modal verbs
8. Writing on various topics to be determined by the students and instructor
9. Various oral topics based on readings and other sources. Topics may include childhood, politics (simple concepts), belief systems, use of simile and metaphor, structure of the language (these themes, concepts and issues are not necessarily presented here in the order presented in class; presentation depends largely on the makeup of the student population in a specific course)

Course Content: Competencies and Skills:
The student will:

1. Manage introductions and "small talk" in a culturally appropriate manner (e.g. talk about him or herself (background, job, school experience, etc.)
2. Speak in the present and past tenses with a relatively high degree of accuracy
3. Speak in the past tenses using "als, wenn and wann" fairly accurately
4. Use the four cases including corresponding prepositions with a fair amount of accuracy
5. Describe possession of objects and family relationships using possessives
6. Express likes, dislikes and other concepts of will using modal verbs
7. Write short paragraphs on a variety of simple topics
8. Discuss various simple topics orally