My German course is coming to an end. Therefore, I decided to dedicate a post to discuss the material used during this course. I believe that it could be helpful to know for future students what exercises we do in class and what interactive material is used through the course.
This is my first course in Deutsch Akademie. I am about to finish the level A2.1. I know, I am still very new in this. Although you might think I do not have enough experience, I can see the difference between now, and the school I was before. It has been an 8-week course, twice a week for 3 hours a day. Initially, I felt I was going to be overwhelmed between that and work. On the contrary, the time has gone extremely fast! I am glad I got to invest time in it as much as I wanted.
There are different exercises to reinforce your writing, speaking, and reading skills when you are learning a language. As of right now, my favorite exercises are in reading. For some reason, it is the area where I feel a lot more comfortable. We usually read ads or stories in the course and we analyze them while answering questions about its content. My worst area is speaking! I usually feel I have all the words I need in my head, but I cannot find how to put them together. Have that happened to you before? I have seen important progress since I started in Deutsch Akademie. We have done plenty of speaking exercises and the professor is constantly speaking in German. Therefore, we feel that we should be speaking it as well. Lastly, my writing skills are acceptable considering my level, of course. I still struggle with the right positioning of the words but, luckily, there are a variety of exercises in the books that help me with that. My favorites are the ones in which you have to organize sentences. It helps me understand exactly why the worlds should go in that order.
The best way to become better at it is by using the right tools. I am very satisfied with the number of exercises we get from the Menschen books recommended in Deutsch Akademie. I also use Deepl.com as a translator, and der-artikel.de/ to review which are the right articles for the words. You can see below what I called my German-pack of studying. And you? Which tools do you use?
Blog submitted by Eugenia Sanchez