The course is designed as an extension of the ​German ​Summer Reading Course​, to develop increasing reading comprehension of academic texts in German.  It​ combin​es targeted reading practice, high-frequency vocabulary learning, grammar review, as well as speaking and pronunciation activities.  Classes will be conducted in English, with a limited but critical portion of class time devoted to spoken German, in order to foster an internal sense of how the language works.  ​Students will improve their ability to read with minimal reliance on dictionaries.  Assessment will be based on students’ proficiency in comprehending and summarizing academic texts of increasing length and complexity over the course of the semester. ​ ​In addition to ​reading a selection of texts ​provided by the instructor​, students will read and discuss texts they choose themselves, from their own fields of interest.  German 503 meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11am to 12:20pm, and is P/D/F.

Prerequisites:

• Basic familiarity with the 600 most frequently used words in German, as set out in Jones & Tschirner, A Frequency Dictionary of German;
• Conceptual grasp of the grammatical structures covered in the Summer Reading Course, i.e., all of the basic syntactic structures of German; and
• Demonstration of reading proficiency equivalent to the Graduate Reading Exam, that is, the ability to translate an academic text of approximately 500 words, within three hours, using a dictionary.