Monday’s back! Anyone else had a long day? If you’ve been at school, I feel you. It’s been a long day, for me at least!
Onto the next post in this series – and we’re back to specific topics. Like I said before, I’m generally following the AQA spec, though most of these activities are quite different to what you’d find on your exam. Hopefully though they’ll expose you to the grammar again, and maybe even some more vocab!
So what this topic refers to are familial relationships, as well as friendships – and future plans you may have regarding marriage, children, etc. Like last time, I have a few activities for each skill (listening, reading, writing and speaking) that you can use to practise. As before, I’d recommend that you also start learning the appropriate vocabulary, either through memrise or another method/website.
Listening
BBC Bitesize – Relationships and Children [foundation] [higher]: As usual, the activities on BBC Bitesize are very straightforward. You have the one listening activity and they provide you with the answers, transcript and some tips to use for your exam. The higher version of this text seems to give you some more useful vocabulary too – which may be useful regardless of which version of the exam you’re taking.
DW.com – Erste Schritte: 02: Introducing the family: This might feel a little basic – you’ve most likely gone over the vocabulary for family members before, but it’s a nice refresher. There’s a video you can watch (it’s about two minutes long and just has a guy saying each word) or you can download an mp3 file.
Young Germany – Ten Pop Songs That Will Help You Learn German: This, again, isn’t a listening activity as such – but hey, listening to music counts as language learning, too! There are, as it says, ten songs on this page, but the one I’m most interested in for this topic is Wir trafen uns im Garten (We met in the garden) by 2raumwohnung. The website says that “it is one of the many songs that will help you learn the vocab you need to talk about a break-up, but unlike many of its thematic relations, it has an upbeat and positive sound and attitude.” They’re not wrong. You can also read the lyrics while you listen here.
Reading
Deutsch Perfekt – Deutsch für die Liebe: This article is probably about at A2 level (remember, CEFR levels – it has nothing to do with your A-Levels!), but it’s quite short and entertaining so I’m sure you can manage it. This article is about flirting and relationships in Germany – fun, huh?
Deutsch Perfekt – Die Deutschen und die Liebe: This article is a little more difficult than the previous one, but it’s about the same length; it seems to be an extract from a longer article, but it makes sense on its own. Some of the words/phrases you might not know are highlighted; but don’t be afraid to look something up if you can’t guess its meaning from context. Again, this is about how Germans find love – or don’t.
Writing
nthuleen.com – Schreibprojekt 3: Partner(in) finden: So this activity was clearly made to go along with a particular course, but the principal behind it is good enough. The basic premise is that you imagine you are setting a friend up on a blind date; you think you’ve found him/her a perfect partner and you want to describe this person to your friend. There is a lot of useful information here and some questions you can use to structure your writing. It’s suggested that you write 50-60 words; I would suggest more, maybe 100-120. That sounds like a lot, but it’s good to practise writing a little more.
AQA Teacher Resource Bank – Additional Exemplar Tasks: Controlled Writing Assessment: Okay, so I just found this resource today and it looks really useful. Basically, it’s an extra booklet of writing tasks related to the different topics that you would cover in a language GCSE. There are two different tasks related to the ‘relationships and choices’ topic; so you can pick one of these and write about it too. Plus – if you’re doing another language GCSE, you can use this for that too, because it’s all in English.
Remember, if you do a writing task, try and get someone to correct it. This could be a native speaker friend, your teacher, or even someone online. Once you have the corrections, try and work out where you went wrong; don’t just ignore them.
Speaking
Like last time, I’ve taken some questions from this website: Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom and translated them into German. There’s a lot of choice for relationships (friends, family, family and alternative lifestyles, etc.) however, so it’s worth checking them out on your own, too!
See if you can answer the following questions. How long can you speak for?
- Sind Freunde wichtiger als Familie? Was glaubst du?
- Magst du deine Familie? Warum/warum nicht?
- Beschreib eine(n) FreundIn.
- Wie winnst du neue Freunde?
- Kannst du eine typische Familie beschreiben?
- Wer sollte sich um alte Leute kümmern? Warum?
Everything Else
I found a lot of worksheets for this topic on nthuleen.com again, so I’m just going to leave a list here:
- Arbeitsblatt: Die Familie und Verben mit ‘gern’
- Die Familie (Wortschatz)
- Die Familie: Pluralformen (Wortschatz)
- Freundschaft und Liebe: Substantive (Wortschatz)
- Freundschaft und Liebe: Pluralformen und Artikel (Wortschatz)
I also found this when I was searching: it seems to be a set of lessons designed to teach this lesson at GCSE. I don’t know how useful it will be when you’re learning the topic; but it certainly covers it quite succinctly for your revision. It’s also not just all vocabulary – there’s some grammar involved there, too.
Yet again, lots of stuff for you here! Take it steadily and you’ll get there. Let me know as well, if you find any great resources I’ve missed (I’ll add them to the post) or just if you’re using these resources. Hope you’re all enjoying October so far!