German Beginners extra resources?

[tphillips06]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently in Year 11 studying German Beginners via distance education. I was wondering if anyone has any extra resources for studying for listening or writing for German Beginners? Currently I'm just working through my modules, however I feel like there is more I could be doing to practice my skills as I am aiming for a Band 6 next year. Any advice from other languages would be good too haha

Thanks!

[Rom_Dog]

Hey!
Duolingo is a favourite of mine and just 15 minutes a day can make a difference, in my opinion the most important part to learning a language is consistency. Online German Club also has a few listening exercisers for beginners which you might find useful http://onlinegermanclub.com/
I hope this helps! Good luck with your study

[owidjaja]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently in Year 11 studying German Beginners via distance education. I was wondering if anyone has any extra resources for studying for listening or writing for German Beginners? Currently I'm just working through my modules, however I feel like there is more I could be doing to practice my skills as I am aiming for a Band 6 next year. Any advice from other languages would be good too haha

Thanks!

Hey there,

I didn't study German but one of my friends who did German Continuers recommended two resources: Duolingo for vocabulary and Nancy Thuleen for grammar.

Another thing I'd recommend doing is to listen to some German music or maybe the German news/TV shows and see what you're able to pick up (personally, I'd start with music first because the news might be a bit intimidating, especially when they start talking about politics but you do you!). Plus, I think listening to music could make studying the language a bit more fun rather than doing worksheets. Might I recommend the song 99 Luftballons

Hope this helps!

[fantasticbeasts3]

Hi!!

I’m studying German at uni atm and these are my favourite resources:
- DW.com: you can do these set of exercises under this thing called “Nicos Weg” - exercises are based off videos so they’re really good for listening! I would recommend you do the A1 level ones. DW is also a German news service and they do this amazing thing called Slow German which is a (1) news podcast and (2) a series of videos on YouTube and the best part is that the speakers talk really slowly (like suuuuuper slow).
- Writing a journal in German is really useful and you can also use it to look back on how much progress you’ve made :-)
- Netflix is my favourite! If you set your Netflix language to German it’ll let you have German audio instead of English, so it’ll dub everything in German. Leave the subtitles in English so you have an understanding of what you’re watching and you can also pick up a few German colloquialisms when translated from English so that’s pretty nifty.

I hope this helps :-)

[InnererSchweinehund]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently in Year 11 studying German Beginners via distance education. I was wondering if anyone has any extra resources for studying for listening or writing for German Beginners? Currently I'm just working through my modules, however I feel like there is more I could be doing to practice my skills as I am aiming for a Band 6 next year. Any advice from other languages would be good too haha

Thanks!

Hey!

I'm currently studying and completing German Continuers HSC this year, also via distance education. I also completed German Beginners via distance education.

Writing
My biggest tips would be to complete all the module work, and spend extra time on the part 5's. Pay attention to any corrections, especially relating to grammar. This is a great website for grammar https://coerll.utexas.edu/gg/gr/about.html
This website is great for learning verbs and conjugation vocabulix.com/
Also try get some of the basics downpat, this includes your cases, case and adjective ending, and prepositions (especially dative)
After listening to this song a few times, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw1O_Z9Wo-8 you will never forget them (trust me).

If you can, try and and learn some 'authentic german phrases'. My personal favourite it man soll den tag nicht vor dem abend loben (Don't count your chickens before they hatch). Using phrases like these are always a hit with the markers, and are almost guaranteed to bump your marks up.

Speaking
With speaking, especially with distant ed, make sure you are having at the very least one 20-30min phone lesson per week . It's great if you can have a few more, and if you can also practice with other teachers - just ask your teacher first and I'm sure they won't mind helping you organise it. Personally, in year 12 I'm having at least 4 phone lessons a week with at least 2 different teachers.

It would also be really helpful to start creating strong answers to the speaking questions in each of the part 5 reviews of the module. These are the questions you will ultimately receive in the HSC oral exam, and you'll be making life much easier for yourself if you start learning the questions and answers now, rather than trying to cram them right before your oral exams in year 12.

Listening
For listening, I would recommend podcasts.
I found the Slow German mit Annik Rubens was a really good one to start with because it was easy (slow) to listen to, and covered module work, as well as Deutsch - warum nicht? This series has some really interesting topics and some episodes have PDF worksheets to go with them.

Final Tips
· Try and get the modules done as quickly as you can, without jeopardising your learning. This is really great because then if you have tests for other
   subjects, you may have a few extra lessons you could use to study for them instead of doing German, or you can start doing past German HSC exams.
· Make sure you buy yourself a good dictionary (such as Collins German + grammar dictionary) to use in exams, because you have to bring your own.
· Installing a German Keyboard on your laptop is really handy for online work, especially with ß ö ä ü
· Do NOT use google translate. It's a becomes a bad habit. If you really need to use a translator, use this website
  https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-german and translate word by word - this also helps to develop your vocab

I probably have some more tips but that's all I can think of for now. Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.

Viel Glück!!