Dear Year 9 and Year 10 Parents,We are delighted that your child has chosen to continue studying German.

At this level, many students should already have enough background knowledge to begin learning German outside the classroom as well as inside it. With the help of an iPad, your child can listen to podcasts, read simple texts, review vocabulary and check grammar. The range of apps, dictionaries and reading material for language learning is constantly growing.

From Year 10 on, your child will also have the opportunity to spend 4 weeks in Germany, going to school for 3 weeks in Lippstadt, where our sister school is situated, and visiting Berlin for one week.

An iPad makes it possible to construct a kind of virtual German world. With this device, your child can consolidate existing language knowledge and prepare for the possible experience of visiting and living in Germany. Possible downloads include:

dictionaries at a fraction of the cost of the equivalent paper dictionaries podcasts for beginners through to advanced learners apps for German word games, vocabulary revision and grammar consolidation hundreds of books and magazines

We hope that the recommendations in the attached file under each of these headings will increase your child’s motivation and growing proficiency in German.

Kind regards fromMeena Nathan, Anett Dreher, Jana Kühn and Roslyn Green

We are trialling the use of QR-Codes in some German classes this year. These codes can be scanned with the free app recommended below. When the student scans the code, the recommended website or page on the school’s German blog opens automatically. In this way a student can zip around to recommended pages without ever being tempted to use the iPad for any other purpose than the quest for knowledge. German knowledge, that is.

Link to scanning app: QR-Reader for iPad

Recommended Dictionary

♦The Collins German-English Dictionary  costs $24.99 (about one-third of its price as a paper dictionary). It provides a wealth of idiomatic expressions and, most importantly, conjugations of every verb in every tense. Click here for more information:

LINK TO COLLINS DICTIONARY INFORMATION

Podcasts for Beginners through to Advanced LearnersApp for podcast downloading:

Podcasts app – free

To read about the whole range of recommended podcasts, go to this page on the school’s German blog:http://germanisland.global2.vic.edu.au/year-9/recommended-podcasts/

Four highly recommended podcasts The podcasts below are all available through iTunes and can be directly downloaded to an iPad, iPhone or iTouch, once the Podcasts app has been downloaded. Each podcast below also has its own dedicated website. To download the podcasts, open the podcasts app and type the name of the podcast into the search bar. Subscribe to each podcast and choose which episodes you would like to download.

Beginners: Coffee Break German – audio free; notes may be bought if desired – also available

through the Radio Lingua website Deutsch – Warum nicht? – also available through the Deutsche Welle Radio Service

For more ambitious and advanced students: Slow German by Annik Rubens (downloadable PDFs of all texts) Grüße aus Deutschland from the Goethe Institut (downloadable PDFs of all texts)

Apps for German word games, vocabulary revision and grammar consolidation – a tiny selection♦ Flashcards Deluxe AppVocabulary learning has become digital – with audio.Using this app, students can download all the Quizlets on our German blog and also create their own digital flashcards. They also have the option of downloading sound via the Quizlet website at http://quizlet.com/Link to a description of the functions of Flashcard Deluxe

♦ German Crossword App This neat little app allows students to practise common words in a relaxed way. The app also provides hints when a student can’t guess a word and it pronounces solved words aloud. The cost is $5.49.

Reading Material in German available on iPads♦ Children’s Magazines in German

At this link (http://www.blinde-kuh.de/news-print.html) it is possible to download children’s magazines in German as PDFs at no cost. These can be read in any number of PDF reading apps, for instance, Good Reader.

♦ Zeitungskiosk – Some German magazines are available through the Australian iTunes Store. For school students, Zeit Leo is highly recommended. It can be directly downloaded through an app called Zeit Kiosk. Each issue costs around $5 and is full of short, clearly written articles aimed at intelligent children in Germany. There are many speech bubbles and brief blocks of text with comments from children themselves – on their lives, their schools, their families and their problems. The language is down-to-earth and authentic, as well as varied and thoughtful – all this without being inaccessible to a learner. Ask your son or daughter to check the website for some downloadable pages from the issues that have been published so far, in order to determine whether he/she could profit from this level of reading.

♦ Cornelsen Krimis:  These can be found by typing “Cornelsen” into your “Apps” search bar. These stories are labelled B1 and are therefore quite challenging. Only your child can judge whether they are still too far above his/her level of proficiency. The stories cost

$5.49 each, or 8 can be bought for the cost of 5. You can hear the stories as well as read them.INTERNET LINK TO CORNELSEN AND HÖRKRIMI INFORMATION

♦ Schlafgeschichten HD offers a large number of in-app stories that one can buy for 99 cents each. All of the stories can be heard as well as read. All are classic fairy stories and fables. The advantage of these stories is that students should already know most of the stories quite well and therefore will be able to guess at the vocabulary. Many are also beautifully presented. THIS LINK is in German but will take you to the iTunes location for this app if desired.

♦ Aschenputtel from Carlsen, a publisher in Germany (Cinderella, see the two screen prints above) – This app is pricy (around $9), but utterly beautiful. By clicking on the characters’ bodies, one can hear a range of pithy and amusing remarks. Download the free version to see if you want to outlay the extra and read/hear the whole story.

♦ Die drei Schweinchen, also from Carlsen – same beautiful app and style as Aschenputtel above – pricy but worth it.

Please feel free to contact the school for more information. Most of the information above is also summarized under “Klasse 9” on the school’s German blog: http://germanisland.global2.vic.edu.au/