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Courses beyond German 232 in Fall 2011*

250 Speaking German
FOL-G, ORC. Taught in German. Counts toward German major
Prerequisite: German 232 or equivalent
Professor Karen Achberger: MWF 12:55-1:50 PM

This course is designed to teach speaking strategies and bring students to an Intermediate-High level of oral proficiency through practice in everyday communication such as interviews, party games, telling stories, giving reports, and organizing social events. The course focuses on higher-order functions such as paragraph-length narration, presenting opinions, group discussion, and formal presentations, as well as interviews, debates, and regular group conversations with classroom guests and speakers. Taught in German.

251 Understanding Narratives
FOL-G, WRI. Taught in German. Counts toward German major
Prerequisite: German 232 or equivalent
Professor Karl Fink: T 9:35-11:00, Th 9:30-10:50

Students examine narrative texts, such as short stories, novel excerpts, and other fictional works, including film, with respect to plot and characters, relationships and themes, narrative strategies and structures. Weekly writing assignments offer practice in narration, extended description, as well as expressing and supporting an opinion about the texts and the ways they engage their respective times. The course is designed to teach writing strategies and includes basic and advanced grammar review, as needed. The final project is a short paper written in German. Taught in German.

372 Topics in German Studies: Germans at the Cutting Edge
HWC, WRI. Taught in German. Counts toward German major
Prerequisite: at least one 270-level course
May be repeated if topic is different
Professor Karen Achberger: T 9:35-11:00, Th 9:30-10:50

This seminar for advanced students of German allows us to explore a wide range of areas in which Germans have made a substantial contribution. Instead of working exclusively in a one-on-one individual research (IR) setting, students develop and share their work with fellow students as well as the instructor in a seminar-like setting. Students may come to the course with a research agenda already in mind, or they may use the seminar discussions and one-on-one conferences with the instructor to discover an area for further individual research. Whether it is Germany in the European Union, Luther and the Peasant Wars, or Beethoven in Vienna, students use their knowledge of German to investigate a particular area of interest to themselves.
We begin with the common topic, “German Writers in Exile,” focusing especially on Brecht and Mann in California during the Nazi period through close reading, discussion, analysis, and interpretation of excerpts from their works, as well as theoretical texts.
After the initial period of common readings, class meetings focus on individual research projects, their progress and challenges, from the technical language and vocabulary (Fachsprache) of different fields to procedures for accessing German databases and organizational strategies for writing formal papers in German. Students develop a bibliography, thesis and outline, present and revise drafts of their project, the final result of which is a 7-8 page research paper in German on a subject of their choosing.