B1 Intensive Courses

Level B1.1

In B1.1 (approx. 90 units), we repeat and deepen the grammar area, including the past tense, clauses with „dass“, clauses with „zu + infinitive“, pronominal adverbs, modal verbs, substitute expressions for modal verbs, the subjunctive II (the German Konjunktiv II) as well as all types of subordinate clauses.

The main goal of the course B1.1 consists in expanding your syntactic skills, i.e. you will learn how to form sentences more spontaneously and reach a higher level of overall fluency, which means that you will need less time to formulate sentences to express your thoughts and abstract ideas.

In the area of reading and listening comprehension, you already will get to know some typical task formats of various exams such as DSH or telc. When selecting the texts, we make sure that we cover as many topics as possible that are relevant for young adults (e.g. health, media, transport, society, technology, the environment, politics, science, etc.) so that you will be able to always express yourself in a coherent and convincing way.

With regard to text production, in B1.1 we mainly deal with summaries and discussions (arguments). So you will learn how to weigh up the pros and cons and take a personal position on a question or problem. Of course, we also attach great importance to communication, whereby in B1.1 we learn to summarize texts, experiences, wishes or events verbatim, to express and justify opinions and plans and to weigh up advantages and disadvantages

Level B1.2

In B1.2 (approx. 90 units), we take a big step in the area of grammar. While in B1.1 we deepen and consolidate basic structures in B1.1 so that you can speak German more fluently, spontaneously and correctly in everyday life, we devote in ourselves to scientific language structures for the first time in the second module.

First, we will learn to form active and passive sentences with and without a modal verb – namely in the present tense, all past tenses, in the future and possibly in the subjunctive 2 present and perfect.

After that, we will deal with the question how we can put an active sentence into the passive voice and vice versa, and how passive sentences are formed that contain no subject. After finishing the topic „active voice and passive voice“, we will revise relative clauses and adjective declensions. Eventually, we will learn how you can transform relative clauses into participles (so-called „Links-Attribute) and vice versa. Depending on how quickly we finish the topic, we may also cover the topics nominalization and verbalization.

As regards the development of your reading and listening skills, we will proceed to cover more and more typical exercises that you can also find in official exams. Furthermore, we will read and listen to longer and more complex texts. As for your writing skills, we will gain more knowledge about how to write a discussion and long essays. We will also learn how we can describe objects, events and procedures in a text. Concerning your communicative skills, we will practise how to discuss with other students, how to agree and disagree with an opinion, how we can summarize longer texts orally and how we can describe things orally.

Your skills after the course:

After the course, you will be able to understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. You will also be capable of dealing with most situations likely to arise while travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Furthermore, you can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest and you can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Textbooks used:
Akademie Deutsch Intensivlehrwerk Band 3
Akademie Deutsch Zusatzmaterial Band 3
Übungsgrammatik für die Mittelstufe (Kurzfassung)

Supplementary self-made materials