During Year 7 students cover the basics of German grammar and pronunciation in a variety of contexts. Topics covered include: personal details, family and pets and school. Students are introduced to the notion of noun, gender and regular and irregular verb forms as well as some of the intricacies of German sentence order. Students are also introduced to the basic skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

In Year 8, German students build on the work begun in Year 7. They continue to develop their listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. Grammar topics include the present tense, using gern, possessive adjectives, and using es gibt. The topics are Free Time, At Home and In a German Town. We continue to work on pronunciation and confidence with speaking.

In Year 9, German students build on the work begun in Year 8. They continue to develop their listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. New grammar topics include subordinating conjunctions, an introduction to the future and past tenses and modal verbs. Other grammar points are comparatives and superlatives and ‘verb-comma-verb’ constructions. The topics are Music, Health and Food and Drink, School and Future Plans, A Holiday in the Past and Going Out. We continue to work on pronunciation and confidence with speaking.

The German course in Year 10 and 11 is a continuation of the work done in the previous years. The main aim of the course is to allow students to develop the ability to use German as a means of practical communication. A competent, accurate use of grammar is also important. The language used is as authentic and useful as possible, dealing with the topics of People and Lifestyle, Popular Culture and Communication and the World Around us.

Four main skills are developed, understanding the written and spoken language and communicating in the written and spoken language. All four skills (listening, reading, writing and speaking) are assessed with an equal 25% weighting, at the end of Year 11.

During the lessons, students are expected to participate as actively as possible. There is plenty of listening and reading comprehension practice, and students learn grammar and writing skills. We also aim to help our students to become confident speakers of German who truly enjoy communicating in the language.