How to study German?

Jayeire

Just after sitting my German mock a couple of days ago and it's made me realise that I actually need to do much more study!!

Has anybody got any ideas how to go about studying for German?
My teacher is completely useless btw

1huge1

Well make sure to study well for the orals anyway, their not that far off...

Write out what your gonna say and practise it over and over and over...

as for the written exam go over the tenses etc

best thing you can do is practise exam papers of course.
what exactly are you finding hard?

An Citeog

Have a read through this thread op.

Try reading German daily and watching German TV/films if you can. I'd recommend taking a look at this site: http://www.deutsche-welle.de/dw/0,2142,265,00.html.

I would have suggested going to Germany for a week or so to do a language course but it's probably a bit late now. Anyway, the grammar is important for the LC and keep doing past papers and whatever excercises your teacher gives you but that little bit of extra effort will be heavily rewarded.

europerson

Learn a lot of vocabulary and a lot of grammar, and everything else is really just a combination of those, so you'll be set.

kingkev100

i am a german teacher and this is a question i hear all the time!
my advice is as follows:
take a topic at a time and only study it alone that evening/day.
a topic could be part 1 of the orals and be able to answer all questions in that section, bearing in mind the present/past/conditional tense questions that you will be asked in this section.
the next time take another topic... die Umwelt for example and learn off all relevant vocab/phrases relevant to this topic
the next time take another topic... exam technique for example and learn off the paragraphs/phrases for the brief and ausserung
the next time just do tape work...
i hope this helps,

europerson

kingkev100 wrote: »

i am a german teacher

learn off all relevant vocab/phrases relevant to this topic

learn off the paragraphs/phrases for the brief and ausserung

I find it hard to believe that a German teacher would advocate such views. Unless of course, rather than teaching German, you just ask students to remember a selection of phrases, with no understanding of how they were put together or formed. Learning off whole paragraphs? That's just silly and stifles a student's creativity, which can be afforded to him/her, if he/she understands grammar and has a good vocabulary.

kingkev100

europerson,
why do make your argument based on your own unfounded assumptions. if you had asked me before posting your reply then i would have explained that they( the pupils) learn off the phrases that they have themselves accumalated since 5th year, having made a note of them after reading them in comprehensions or hearing these phrases from tape/film/podcasts.
The original question was how to best study german... with the german exam being now only 9 weeks away. While understanding the grammar and self discovering vocabulary is great to somebody in 5th yr and early 6th yr, its no help at all when the exam is 9 weeks away!
my advice still stands to pupils who face the great points/memory test aka the leaving cert in 9 weeks time