German Lower Intermediate (full syllabus)

Taught over one year, this German intermediate course will cover a wide variety of topics to improve your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.

You will work in pairs or small groups to describe your daily routine, talk about your career and plans for the holidays. New forms of grammar will include reflexive verbs, modal verbs in the past tense, conjunctions, prepositions, relative clauses and the passive voice.

You’ll build your understanding of current social and political affairs in Germany so preparing you for in-depth conversations with native speakers.

Starting in October, you will work towards CEFR A2/B1 level of the Common European Framework Reference of language learning.

Who is it for?

You should have around 60 hours of prior formal learning or be able to communicate at CEFR A1/A2 level. If you may have completed our German beginners syllabus or have a rusty GCSE this is a good place to continue. See the eligibility section for more details.

Timetable

The course includes 60 hours of learning and is taught across three terms, starting in October and finishing in July.

October – December (Part 1)

• One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for 10 consecutive weeks.

Christmas Break

January – March (Part 2)

• One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for 10 consecutive weeks.

Easter break

April/May – July (Part 3)

• One evening per week (two-hour lessons) for 10 consecutive weeks.

Benefits

• It’s cheaper to sign up for the full course than paying for each part separately
• Improve your communication with German-speakers
• Learn from a highly qualified German tutor alongside a small group of peers
• Learn at an established London university.

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• share personal details
• describe your daily work and home life
• discuss the German education system
• tell someone about future activities
• talk about your career choices and work
• understand and discuss leisure trends and lifestyles
• debate negative and positive aspects of work
• understand and format a standard CV
• talk about Berlin and its attractions
• plan a weekend break
• discuss Berlin’s past and present, and national stereotypes
• discuss trends in food and eating in Germany
• talk about political systems and parties
• compare how life has changed between generations
• discuss environmental issues
• give pros and cons of an opinion piece
• describe your media habits.

Grammatical Structure

• revision of perfect tense (regular and irregular)
• revision of dative case in a sentence
• prepositions
• reflexive verbs
• infinitive plus zu
• modal verbs in the past tense
• the verb werden
• ordinal numbers
• conjunctions
• prepositions and cases
• changing prepositions
• genitive
• adjective endings
• relative clauses
• subjunctive
• passive voice
• indirect question sentences.

There is no formal assessment and you won’t receive a qualification, but you will be awarded an official City, University of London certificate on completion of the course. You must attend over 70 per cent of the classes to be eligible for the certificate.

Although you don’t need to sit an exam, you will be set weekly homework for marking. Your progress will be assessed by your tutor throughout, who will give regular feedback to aid your continuous development.

Teaching

This course takes a varied approach with lectures, conversations, pair and group work, and short presentations. We also use ‘drillings’ – listening and repeating key word, verbs and phrases to reinforce learning.

Later parts of the course focus on developing analytical and critical thinking skills. You will also improve your comprehension of more complicated spoken or written material, and how to convert these into summary notes in German.

It is the right level if one of the following applies:

• you can communicate at A1/A2 level, according to the Common European Framework Reference of languages
• you have completed our full German beginners syllabus, or equivalent elsewhere (at least 60 hours of formal study)
• You have a rusty GCSE.

You should already be able to:

• describe what happened at the weekend
• give directions and say where things are
• describe people, places and events
• use the perfect tense (regular and irregular), perfect tense with sein and haben
• understand comparatives and superlatives
• use changing prepositions
• Understand adjective endings.

English requirements

You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.