Any quick tips on German, lads?

Acid_Violet

In my pursuit of an A1 in German, I realised recently that I'm not as good at the reading comprehensions as I thought I was and I take way too long to write the essays. I've got the vocab, just somehow I think I tend to veer off the point... Whilst I think I take too much time again for the reading ones.

Obviously the best advice is to go and practise more myself, but just wondering if there's anyone out there with similar problems or who thinks they can give any tips? Atm I'm checking out the marking schemes. Know any online resources where one can get sample answers etc?

Best of luck to everyone reading this.

Raekwon

German lads are usually quite sound, bit of a weird sense if humour though

Acid_Violet

Thank you for your enlightening contribution...

Any mods want to fix the title? A nice little apostrophe could do the job.

DmanDmythDledge

The comprehensions are easier than you think.

First one is always in first person imperfekt. For answers you need third person, which is exact same. Just change ich to er/sie.

Just copy answers straight from the text. You get no extra marks for using your own German. Look up marking schemes so you know what it required.

For essays marks are divided into two halves- content and expression. When practising focus first on getting full content marks. Keep the German simple. When you get the hang of this try improving your expression.

Also practise loads of aural.

Piste

We're told to give as much info as possible. If there are 5 pieces of information in a paragraph and you're asked for 3, give all 5 in case one of them's wrong. Sometimes they just say "give details". They could be looking for 2 or 6, there's no way of knowing, so put down as much as you can think of. It's amazing how many marks can go for just "give details".

-ME-

DmanDmythDledge wrote: »

Just copy answers straight from the text. You get no extra marks for using your own German. Look up marking schemes so you know what it required.

:eek: WHAT?! Is that definitely true? Our teacher always tells us to answer the comprehensions in our own words and rephrase everything.. What a lot of time I have been wasting!

Nihilist21

-ME- wrote: »

:eek: WHAT?! Is that definitely true? Our teacher always tells us to answer the comprehensions in our own words and rephrase everything.. What a lot of time I have been wasting!

We've always just quote the text, changing "ich" to "er" if it's in first person.

Geg124

Nihilist21 wrote: »

We've always just quote the text, changing "ich" to "er" if it's in first person.

exactly what we have been told, just be careful, if taking it straight from the text, not to use information that is not asked for in the question. you lose marks for this

electrogrimey

If you veer off the point in essays, try doing the letter instead, then you have set questions to answer (but remember there's marks going for every little question they ask), and the ausserung is too short to veer off the point anyway. I think the comprehensions say (in german) at the top whether you can copy from the text or not, but the general rule is as long as you don't copy a full sentence it's fine.

lorr3

any one know where i could listen to the orals on the net?????:) cd from papers decided not to work!!!! GRRRRRRRR!!?????

Acid_Violet

The marking scheme is a flaming disgrace. I do French as well and there's no comparison. For the french aural and reading comprehensions, it's as simple as equal marks per question and everything is nice and straightforward. In German, a question where you're asked for 3 pieces of information could be worth 18 marks and another question where 4 pieces of information is required can be worth only 4 marks in total. Unfortunately, that leaves me wasting a lot of time trying to get EVERYTHING written down, but hopefully I'll do alright on the day.

In every subject, download the marking schemes. They're an education in themselves!