Hello and welcome back to my channel, Sarah im Augenblick! Today I thought I'd
talk to you guys about my experience with A-level German which I completed
this year, so in June, so if you guys are interested in hearing about that please
continue watching!
[intro music]
now I've got a lot of notes my phone so if I'm looking down
and that's what I'm doing, I'm referring to my notes.
So hopefully this video will be helpful for anyone
who's considering taking a language for a level or is just curious about what
it's like studying a foreign language at quite an advanced in England but still sort
of pre-university level. So for those of you don't know, A levels are the
qualification which a lot of people take after completing their GCSEs aged 15
or 16, so A levels are studied between the ages of 16 and 18 normally and they're a
way of preparation for University, so universities require either a levels
or BTECs or International Baccalaureate from students in the UK
for instance in order to judge whether people are usable for a particular
course, so yeah.
Hopefully this will be helpful for people who are either
considering taking German A Level or are doing German A level maybe because I
will show a few tips and tricks that I've used which have proven pretty
helpful. Now I'm aware that the specifications are changing I did my
German a level under AQA which is an exam board in England so as I did the
old style I did AS at the end of year 12 which is the equivalent of half
the A level and then A2 at the end of year 13 which is the second half so I
did 4 exams in total two of which were speaking exams: one after the end of
each year and then the other two were written exams, so reading listening and
writing and they were also at the end of each year.
So this video is going to
be pretty biased not gonna lie because I absolutely loved German A level like it
changed me as a person I mean I know that sounds really clichéd and stuff but
I feel as though it is true because I started year 12 thinking that I wanted
to do maths and physics and I realised that in doing German A Level
actually I want to do languages and humanities!
I'm doing three years of Sixth
Form so I've not had the conventional A level experience but I feel as though I
am qualified to at least how are you about my experience with A-level German
as I did do it over two years so yeah!
So I'm going to try and give you a balanced
analysis of my experience of A Level German because I did definitely have some lows
with this so I'm going to try and share that with you honestly now.
My first sort
of impression of German A level wasn't great because I remember at the
beginning of year 12 I had a lot of anxiety and... German A level certainly
did not help that! [laughs]
I remember one of the biggest shocks was that and we were expected to
speak fluently and in German and spontaneously and be analytical as well
and do everything which you would do in your native language.
It was pretty overwhelming and I I really did feel
so uneasy with that because obviously
speaking the language as well as having plenty of practice with reading
listening and writing is the way to learn there's no hiding from it.
I had come
straight from GCSE so I know that they're changing things more now like
the government have put in place attempts to try and bridge the gap more
between GCSE and A-level so I believe that for languages for GCSE now, students
are actually expected to speak more spontaneously in spoken exams, but for me
my experience with German GCSE speaking was literally that you have to
basically write down a monologue and learn it off my heart and regurgitate it
and then you were judged on that so really you were judged on memory and not
your linguistic ability which is probably why I didn't do so well at GCSE
as I perhaps could have done.
I kept doubting myself...
like, am I even capable of doing this? Is learning foreign language
too much? but honestly if you do stay persistent with it and learn vocab and
stuff using apps like Quizlet...
Quizlet is an absolute lifesaver guys I'm not
gonna say that you will have no problems because obviously this is A-Levels; you
will encounter challenges but it will certainly make your life a lot easier
but what I will say is that a lot of work is needed throughout the year on
learning vocabulary and making sure that you're up to speed with the grammar
obviously the grammar which you have to learn for A Level is a lot more
complicated than the grammar for GCSE; I feel as though you can sort of get away
with doing the GCSE without properly learning the grammar at least I feel as
though we could.
I'm not really sure about the new spec.
I feel as though they're
changing that as well but yeah.
A lot of work is needed at the beginning of the
year which perhaps isn't required as much with other subjects.
You very much
have to build up on the content which you've learned beforehand with doing a
language for a level and I feel as though it's not quite the same with
subjects like humanities which perhaps like, say with history, say if you learnt
about like 20th century Germany for GCSE and you're not studying about that for A
level history then you wouldn't necessarily need to know that in order
to a level history because you're learning something completely different
whereas with German any level you have to build upon the vocabulary and all the
you've learnt from GCSE and bring it into A level.
I mean one tip which I will
say is make sure that over the summer you do keep up your German because I
think that what contributed to the massive shock and anxiety that I
experienced at the beginning of year 12 was that I didn't really think about it
I was just like woo GCSEs are over! Let's party! [laughs]
And it didn't
really occur to me that I might lose it over the summer so just keep that in
mind I mean it's not a big deal you just need to keep going over your
vocab and keep looking at the grammar and I know it's like really hard to
stay motivated with but trust me you won't regret if you do it!
Because doing a
language for A level does require a lot of work early on in comparison to other
subjects at least I found you feel a lot more at ease during exams.
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I definitely recommend travelling to the country of the language which you're
learning about if you are doing it as far as A level, especially if you're
doing it for A2 as well.
It was great doing it the summer between
my AS and A2 because it meant that it was another way of keeping it up when
I still had the six or seven weeks off school so I definitely recommend that
and also the Halsbury work experience Twitter page is really good to follow if
you're an A level student or even beyond that like me because they're always
sharing videos of how the various languages relate to the real world
really and their sort of cultural significance and stuff so they do
posts on not just German but Spanish French and Italian as well so basically
the most popular modern foreign languages learnt by British school students.
So I suppose this point is quite specific to German and it doesn't
necessarily apply to every foreign language but I really found that with
German it's really logical and that did help me with my A level studies
in general really and I'd say that it helps me with my English as well so it's
not only helped my German fluency and skills and general competence I'd also
say that it's helped my sort of way of conveying things in English as well
immensely so for example often the German word for something in English is
a lot simpler so for example the English word to convoke I mean I had no idea all
that meant sand but I saw it in German and the German equivalent is 'zusammenrufen'
which means to bring together literally and that's essentially what it
means in English to convoke so in a way the by looking at the German for an
English word which I had no idea what it meant
it's actually helped me sort of expand my vocabulary not just in German but
also in English so I definitely think that is a plus and also I think that
my German A Level has helped me a lot with my essay writing because I am
doing essay based subjects for A level also as well as German which it's
not entirely essay based but it largely is; I think it accounts for about a
third of the exam maybe so it helps me a lot with my organizing my ideas in
essays for other subjects so for example geography I sort of waffled a lot like
at the beginning of my time in sixth form and the German language structure
sort of forces you to get to the point more because of how the syntax works and
where certain components of the sentence appear so it's quite hard to
explain but yeah I feel as though it goes with the whole sort of German
efficiency that organizing your ideas through the German syntax really helps
you express your thoughts more succinctly so yeah it really helps me to
get to the point sooner and actually say what I want to say without saying too
many unnecessary things to be honest I mean this video might prove otherwise
but you know it has improved honestly!
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So I've heard a lot of people say to me Oh Sarah everyone speaks English especially
Germans why on earth would you waste your time learning German a-level or
something to that effect but like I'd say that if I hadn't learned German A level
I would have no idea about how people outside of the english-speaking world
live their lives and see the world so I'd really say that yeah if it wasn't
for German A-level then I would not be where I am now because I really feel as
though you can't really learn about the culture, history and general society of a
country in the same way if you don't know anything about the language which
is spoken there so I definitely think that learning a language to be honest
is worth it, but obviously learning a language is useful anyway in real life I
mean not all Germans speak English I mean admittedly a lot of them do and you
probably could get by with English in Germany as a tourist but if you actually
want to live there I'd say that you probably do need to have at least a
basic knowledge of German; at least that's what I've experienced.
And what's
more, future employees love you if you can speak a foreign language because
obviously foreign languages are extremely rare with native English
speakers so yeah and also the transferable
skills and stuff I mean I could go on and on about this which I won't because
this video's already getting long enough but the transferable skills that
you learn and develop through doing a modern foreign language beyond GCSE are
just so versatile and useful and are loved by employers and higher education
institutions so yeah!
[music]
so I thought I'd do the last section of this video by
sharing with you some of the resources which I utilised in order to do my German A Level
and which I still make use of.
As English is the dominant language in the media so
if you look at the global top 50 charts let's say I think you'll find that
certainly at the moment and most the time most of the songs are in English
be it American English or British English or another form of English and so I feel
as though there's not that much exposure to foreign languages in the charts and
also a lot of popular Netflix shows are produced by english-speaking people.
Obviously a lot of massive YouTubers produce their videos in English as well so
I feel as though native English speakers do have a disadvantage in this that the
language of the developed world like the dominant language certainly does seem to
be English.
I mean I feel as though it is easier to
learn English in terms of immersion than perhaps it is for English people to
learn a foreign language but don't get me wrong learning any foreign language
is extremely difficult and I do feel sorry for people who aren't native
English speakers because English is an extremely difficult language to learn
with all the inconsistencies in pronunciation and grammar and yeah!
I definitely do admire any person who wasn't born into an english-speaking
world and can speak English to any degree so yeah!
As well as grammar
books which I have her to show you guys which are extremely helpful to regularly
practice and revise; so I did a lot of this myself sort of off my own back and
I definitely feel as though this has been an instrumental factor to how I
managed to get quite a good grade in my Germany A level.
As I've mentioned before,
Quizlet is an absolute lifesaver especially for learning vocabulary
and you can do it through recall or recognition and depending on what your
level is and how familiar you are with the certain words you can adjust your
learning mode or test mode in order to cater for that and also Quizlet:
the majority of it is free and I've only ever used the free version so I
definitely think that it's a good frugal way of learning a foreign language
definitely the vocabulary and it can be used for the grammar as well but I don't
feel as though it's quite the best thing for that but the grammar books certainly do
cater for that.
Also even though the music industry certainly and other
aspects of the media does seem to be dominated by English speakers very much
There are a lot of German pop artists who still write their songs in German and I
definitely found that listening to German pop music has been another thing
that's really made me keep up my fluency and passion for the language.
My favourite German artists include Glasperlenspiel, Mark Forster and Max
Giesinger so I'll link their YouTube channels below or at least I'll try to
if I can find them.
I definitely recommend also listening to german chart
music i mean i think you'll find that a lot of it is dominated by english songs
or songs in english but there are still a few german-speaking songs there
so yeah the Goethe-Institut named after a guy who a lot of people say is german
equivalent to Shakespeare is amazing for people
who are learning German as a foreign language and all of their social medias
are absolutely incredible for again seeing how German applies to the real
world as well as the logistics of learning German as a language.
Deutsche Welle is also really good.
They tweet or Instagram the occasional question for
their followers on a certain grammatical structure for instance so I
definitely find that like when I'm scrolling through my Instagram or
something I'm just like oh yeah let's do a bit of German then!
It's a really amazing way of learning German not just in class or and at your desk or whatever but
actually on the go or whenever you're looking through your social media feeds.
So not only does Deutsche Welle have a 'Deutsch lernen' section but they also
have an actual Deutsch section so when you're competent enough in german to say
read an article in German which i found that i was towards the end of year
12 and sort of get the gist of it I mean I'm not saying I understood all of it by
any means but I definitely got the gist of it,
I'd definitely say that the
full-on Deutsch version is good as well.
And also anyone who likes
BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed Deutschland is a thing and it's basically BuzzFeed in German
and I believe they have that in France as well and perhaps other languages so
it's definitely a must if you're into that sort of thing.
And also German
YouTubers not only those who are natives and actually do their videos in German and that
are sort of you know native speeds and level but also I love watching German
YouTubers whether they're expats or they're I'm talking about the cultural
differences and all of their experiences to do with that sort of thing and YouTubers
like that I've really loved watching and I'd say really helped me are Get Germanized,
Don't Trust the Rabbit, Emily Bland and Hayley Alexis I mean
the list goes on but those are the four who I watched the most and yeah I'd say
that they really have inspired me and helped me develop my passion for Germany
So yeah I think I've covered everything now pretty much so
In conclusion I have absolutely no regrets about studying German for A level, I
mean if you had asked me two years ago when I'd first started the course, "do
you regret taking German for A-level?" I definitely would have been like. "yes, I'm
so anxious, why do I suddenly have to speak German and communicate in a
foreign language, like what?!" but now I've been through it I have absolutely no
regrets whatsoever and you know I basically changed my life plan because
of A-level German as I hopefully already conveyed on this channel enough so
yeah and I'd definitely say that if you are considering doing German for A-Level or any
other foreign language for that matter then definitely research it more.
I mean this is just my basic experience on it.
I tried to condense it into a short video
for you although this probably isn't that short now but yeah there's been a
lot of things that I've wanted to put across in this which hopefully I have
done successfully.
So yeah if this has helped you at all in any way then please
give this video a thumbs up.
If you have any comments or questions about doing
German beyond sort of a basic level then feel free to leave those in the comments
and I'll try to answer them for you.
Please subscribe to this channel if you haven't done already
and I hope to see you in another video very soon.
Bye for now!
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