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Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority

Content description VCDEU013

German: 7–10 Sequence / Levels 7 and 8 / Understanding / Systems of language
Content description
Develop knowledge of elements of the German grammatical system, including gender and number, nominative and accusative cases, present tense of regular and some irregular verbs, personal pronouns, possessive adjectives and word order, to describe people, objects, actions, events and relationships
Elaborations
  1. understanding that German has multiple words for ‘the’ and ‘a/an’ according to the gender of the relevant noun, and noticing that the articles for masculine nouns sometimes change (nominative to accusative), for example, Die Frau hat einen BMW.; Der Film hat ein Happy End
  2. comparing pluralisation of nouns in German and English, for example, die for plural nouns
  3. using post-nominal (predicative) adjectives, for example, Unsere Deutschlehrerin ist intelligent.; Die Berge in Österreich sind sehr schön.; Meine Augen sind blau.
  4. noticing the relationship between gender, article, adjective and case when using pre-nominal (attributive) adjectives to describe people, objects, places and events, for example, Ich habe einen kleinen Bruder.
  5. noticing that as well as the articles (for masculine nouns), some pronouns change after certain verbs (accusative direct object), for example, Wir sehen heute den Film.; Es gibt einen neuen Schüler in Klasse 8A.; Ich mag dich.
  6. noticing that articles and pronouns change after particular prepositions (dative), such as those associated with location and destination, for example, Wir sind in der Stadt.; Die Party ist im Garten.; Wie kommst du zur Schule?
  7. using common prepositional phrases formulaically, for example, nach Hause, zu Hause
  8. using personal pronouns to refer to people and things, for example, Was kostet die App? Sie kostet… .
  9. understanding the three German pronouns for ‘you’ (du/ihr/Sie) and when to use them
  10. expressing a relationship to a person or object using some possessive adjectives in the nominative and accusative case, for example, Seine Familie kommt aus Afrika.; Ich liebe meinen Hund .
  11. recognising that in German a subject + verb can have multiple English translations, for example, wir spielen can mean ‘we play’, ‘we are playing’, ‘we do play’, ‘we shall/will play’ and ‘we’re going to play’, and applying this understanding when formulating own German sentences
  12. understanding the concept of regular and irregular verbs (spielen and lesen) and noticing that this is a feature of both German and English (and other languages, such as French, Italian and Spanish)
  13. conjugating the present tense of regular verbs and some common irregular verbs, including sein and haben
  14. understanding structures to express likes, dislikes and preferences, for example, Ich mag Tennis. Ich spiele nicht gern Fuβball. Ich spiele lieber Kricket.
  15. using common modal verbs such as können to describe capabilities (Ich kann gut schwimmen., and Ich möchte and Darf ich… ?) or to make polite requests
  16. gaining awareness of a limited number of routine past tense expressions including some with war and hatte and the present perfect, for example, Sabine war gestern krank. Das hat Spaβ gemacht. Habt ihr ein schönes Wochenende gehabt?
  17. negating verbs and adjectives using nicht and nouns using kein/e, for example, Nein, Marcus hat keine Geschwister.
  18. describing frequency using adverbs and adverbial expressions such as oft, manchmal, jeden Tag, ab und zu, nie
  19. understanding the subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, for example, Ich spiele Basketball., and the need for subject-verb inversion to keep the verb as the second idea/element in the sentence, for example, Heute Abend spiele ich Basketball.
  20. joining words, phrases and sentences using the coordinating conjunctions und, oder, aber
  21. understanding how to form a question, using subject-verb inversion, for example, Hast du Geschwister? and with interrogatives such as wann, was, wer, wie, wie viel, wie viele, wo, woher, warum, welche(-r/s/n) and wohin
  22. locating people, places and objects using adverbs such as rechts, links, oben, unten, hier, dort
  23. using ordinal numbers to give the date or a birthday, for example, Heute ist der erste Ma.i; Seine Mutter hat am 22. April Geburtstag.
  24. understanding and locating events in time (days, months, seasons), including the use of the 24-hour clock, prepositions such as nach and vor, and adverbs and formulaic expressions such as heute, vorgestern, früher, später, am Wochenende, in den Ferien
  25. referring to quantities of people and things, including money, using cardinal numbers up to a billion, as well as decimals, common fractions and negative numbers, for example, Deutschland hat 81,9 Millionen Einwohner.; Die Tagestemperatur liegt bei minus 3 Grad.; Ich habe eine Halbschwester.
  26. building metalanguage to comment on grammar and vocabulary (for example, Nomen, Verben, Zahlen, Fragewörter, groβ/klein schreiben), comparing with equivalent English terms
Code
VCDEU013
ScOT catalogue terms
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