Vettel ist Weltmeister!

Sebastian Vettel ist neuer Weltmeister und ist jüngster Formel-1-Champion aller Zeiten.

BILD

SPIEGEL

ZDF

Wild boar cause chaos in Germany

I read this article below in Metro the other week and thought it was too weird not to tell you about.

Germany builds fake wild boar to see effect on cars when in accidents

Read the article at Metro.co.uk

Apparently wild boar (Wildschweine) are more of a problem in Germany than I realised. Take this article for example. It would be an interesting one to translate for your scrapbook, too.

Loveparade

The Love Parade held in Duisburg, Germany was the biggest dance music festival in Europe, but this year it ended in tragedy as 19 people died and hundreds were injured.

Here are some German news reports covering the incident.

Welt-Online

Bild.de

deutsche Welle

Unnuetzes Wissen

Just in case you haven't had your fill of useless information in class (and by that I mean the Unnuetzes Wissen starters only), here is a link to a similar facebook page. It's updated every day, so you'll never have long to wait for the next.

Lost in Deutschland

So what would be the first thing you notice when you visit Germany? For Brian Melican it was the amount of television towers.

Brian has put together a series of off-the-wall posts about the German way of life, which is unlikely to be understood at first glance by us Brits.

Lost in Deutschland is very informative and very funny.

Ein Haus in Muenchen

Courtesy of the Goethe Institut here is a wealth of reading and listening activities for you to enjoy!

Follow the daily lives of individuals and families living in Munich.

Start by getting to know the 'Bewohner' and then chose from the 'Themen' to see how the people live.

Loads of great cultural references and not too difficult either.

Viel Spass!

Man ist, was man isst!

You are what you eat, or so the saying goes.

Read the interview. Cut up the cards underneath and decide which section of the interview matches which description in English.

Y12 Man Ist Was Man Isst

der Superhirn

The following text is taken from a Paper 1 past paper (although it has been shortened). There is a typical Paper 1 question underneath. You need to decide if the statements are true or false and give a reason why using words from the text.

It will be good practice for your mock exam!

Y12 Der Superhirn

Leseübung

Here you can find another reading exercise to keep you busy over the easter break!

Just read the three texts and try to find the two statements (out of six) that agree with the texts. Then just compare your answers with the answer key.

It's a Level 1 University exercise but you shouldn't have any problems with the texts or the vocab. I've also given you some vocab explanations in German.

Viel Spaß und viel Erfolg!

Reading Exercise

Here are links to two texts.

Zwei Briefe is a fairly easy text with questions.
You can find the ansers here.

Elf Freundinnen sollt ihr sein is a more complex text which contains colloquial language about a womens football team.
You can find the answers here.

Radio fuer Kinder

It might seem a little childish, suggesting that you watch/listen to news, which is written for and by children, but the nice thing with these articles is that as you listen to the news, you can read along.

From the homepage, you will find loads of options:

Radio hoeren - listen to the radio
Nachrichten - listen to and read the news
Wissen - listen to and read about science
Spielen - test your knowledge with a quiz

How to read a German text

Now that you have somewhere to find interesting texts to read, you need to know where to start.

At first glance, it may seem that the texts have been written by aliens and that the Germans just seems to make up new words by sticking them all together (take Dampfschifffahrtsobergehilfe for example), but the situation is not nearly as bad as it looks. Just follow these simple rules:

1. To get the message of a text, you only need to understand the context. You are not expected to understand every word.

2. Keep up-to-date with important events and topics.

3. Use your knowledge of grammar to pick out the verbs, nouns, adjectives, tenses etc...

4. Read a text more than once.

5. Use your knowledge of English. German and English were both influenced by Latin and although the spellings may differ you can see that the words come from the same route.

6. When confronted with a long word, divide it into its parts (e.g. Dampf-schiff-fahrt-s-ober-gehilfe).

7. Use your common sense!

Try it next time you read a text from the blog.

Capitalization in German

You should know by now that all German nouns must begin with a capital letter!

German is the only language in the world that requires the capitalization of ALL nouns and therefore capitalization of nouns is very important (especially in your written work)!

You can find the rules of capitalization for German here and here.

This is an exercise to practise your capitalization skills:

Just fill out the blanks in this text according to the rules of capitalization and compare your results to this text.

Schuldig?

Y12 Schuldig

Publish at Scribd or explore others: grenztruppen berlin wall

Schuldig?

Y12 Schuldig

Publish at Scribd or explore others: grenztruppen berlin wall

JETZT.de

Stuck without anything to read? Fear no more. Just click here.

die Familie der Zukunft

Here is the worksheet from today's lesson (17/12/08). You need to read the short texts and complete the table underneath by adding the correct German translation. The words you need are underlined.

Y12 Family of the Future

Publish at Scribd or explore others: future reading