AS/ A2 German
In the German Department we are very proud of our excellent record at AS and A Level. Many of our pupils go on to study German at university and come back to compliment us on the good foundation we have given them.
The AS course leads to the Edexcel AS German qualification and we use as our textbook the Edexcel German for AS/A level book specifically designed for the exam.
We cover a wide range of topic areas:Youth Culture and Concerns, Healthy Living, School Issues, Further Education and Employment and the Environment.
All four skills, listening, reading, speaking and writing, are honed and are tested in the June exam. Girls have one period per week with the Language Assistant on an individual basis and choose one of the topic areas to focus on.
At the beginning of the year there is a short cultural trip to Berlin (or another major German city) which all girls are encouraged to join. We stay in a youth hotel and visit many important sights and learn a great deal about German history and culture. This provides an excellent start to the year’s study.
At A2 we continue to use the same textbook but we extend our range of topic areas to include Social problems such as homelessness, Genetic engineering, recent German history, the Arts, Racism and others. This gives girls a real opportunity to develop their thinking skills and form well reasoned points of view as well as improving their German. Girls write a number of essays on these topics and also study one set text for the research based question. They continue to have one lesson a week with the Language Assistant to prepare for the oral exam which involves discussion of some of the topics studied.