German

This course is designed for students who have successfully completed the intermediate level of German and who have a sound knowledge of German. It focuses on encounters with various written, spoken and audio-visual texts and exchanges with other course participants. Students further develop and expand their competencies in listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as their understanding of German culture while being enabled to learn reflectively and strategically. The course addresses cultural, political, and historical aspects of the city of Berlin and the German-speaking countries, which students analyze and compare with their own background and experiences. Through this course students develop and regularly employ new strategies for language acquisition. Students gain an improved ability to participate in conversations and discussions of various topics in a German-speaking environment while choosing the right linguistic register. Furthermore, students further improve their ability to read and understand  texts of various length and from a variety of genres without difficulties. In addition, students expand and refine their essay writing skills, and are able to write, independently revise, and correct written work that meets the standards for academic writing.

This pre-semester course prepares foreign students for academic study at a German university. The focus is on the improvement of oral and written expression as well as grammar and lexical proficiency. The course covers selected topics on German politics and society within a historical context. In addition, excursions are planned to introduce students to German culture. Students work with cultural topics in everyday situations and broaden their intercultural knowledge. They are introduced to independent learning methods and familiarize themselves with typical learning situations at German universities. In this class at the B1 level according to CEFR, students consolidate and systematically build further basic grammar points and vocabulary. They expand their proficiency in all four skills. The B1 level is split into two courses, the B1.1 course covers the first half of the level and the B1.2 course covers the second half of the level.

Where do we pick up after the complete moral, physical, and psychological devastation brought on by World War II? How do we compose poetry in the shadow of the Holocaust, a genocide beyond imagination? How do we write poetry in a language that was used by the Nazis to justify an unjust war and the murder of millions? What forms can suffering and trauma take in literary texts? Young German writers asked themselves these questions starting in 1945 and proposed a number of solutions – or produced a number of attempts – that today are known as "Kahlschlagliteratur" (the literature of clear-cutting) or Zero Hour Literature. This course reviews texts of various genres in translation, considers them in their historical and literary contexts, and identifies common properties and tendencies. The course also questions the validity of the label "Zero Hour," along with its implicit assumption of a complete reset. The focus is on better-known writers (whose texts are available in English), such as Wolfgang Borchert and the Nobel-prize winning Heinrich Böll.

Lower intermediate level B1 allows students to progress from the elementary command of language of the basic course level to the independent language use of level B2. Students develop reading, listening, writing and speaking skills in these courses with the purpose of improving the understanding of the lectures, seminars, and exercises in their own field of study in Germany. This helps students carry out assignments in their own subject successfully. The B1 level is split into two consecutive courses, the B1.1 course covers the first half of the level and the B1.2 course covers the second half of the level.