Project K03: "Have Fun with German" | last modified: 6/26/08
Resource use policy (on-line translators, dictionaries, etc.)
Purposes: The projects encourage you to use the language more independently and creatively, and to customize your experience of the language and culture to your own interests, knowledge and circumstances. This first project also aims to give you a strong start on the series of projects by leading you through the process in two stages and in considerable detail. You will be doing such projects every several weeks throughout the year. You will be selecting and doing some activity that should be fun for you and is related to German language and culture. You'll be finding useful words for it in advance, adding to that list after you do the activity, and then writing something that tells about the activity and invites others to join you in it as if you were going to do it again (which you may in fact want to do, this time with friends, family or classmates). There are two stages, so that your instructor can make sure you start on the right track. We hope to have movies available in class to check out for free, when we arrange the cabinet we've moved into the classroom. Advice: 1) Suggestions for activities: watch a movie, listen to a CD, go to a concert, watch German soccer on TV, listen to a radio program having to do with German music (try 89.9 FM) go to a German restaurant, attend a German wine-wasting, cook German food. Aim for something that exposes you to a good quantity of language and culture, and that you can do socially, rather than all alone. 2) As always, read the scoring guides before you start. Projects can be revised later with grade changes as warranted. 3) Review Kontexte 1 & 2 and think over how you can use the project to demonstrate what you have learned so far. 4) The invitation you create should not be a long and detailed essay about the activity, and trying to do that by writing in English and then translating into German is begging for a failure. By their very nature, casual invitations like this are short and in simple languge. You could even make a "what-who-where-when" poster that uses phrases rather than long sentences. Aim to make your invitation look, well, "inviting," as though it were the real thing. Colors, graphics, etc. are welcome. Project description and final scoring guide (.pdf, 14KB) Scoring guide for stage 1 (.pdf, 8KB)