1st Edition

German Reading Skills for Academic Purposes

By Alexander Burdumy Copyright 2020
    296 Pages 31 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    296 Pages 31 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    German Reading Skills for Academic Purposes allows researchers and learners with no prior understanding of German to gain an understanding of written German at CEFR C2/ACTFL Intermediate-High level that will allow them to read a variety of German texts, including research articles and monographs.

    This is achieved by looking closely at the elements of German grammar required for the understanding of written German along with practical advice and observations.

    One of the main themes running through the textbook is that it uses a toolkit approach that puts deductive reasoning and decoding skills at its heart to allow learners to engage with a wide variety of texts.

    Chapter 1 – Deductive Reasoning; German alphabet and pronunciation; cognates  Chapter 2 – Fundamental German and English grammar concepts; German sentence structure  Chapter 3 – German genders; plurals in German; separable verbs; how to identify verbs  Chapter 4 – Modal verbs; imperative forms; idiomatic expressions with es  Chapter 5 - The German case system; negation  Chapter 6 – The past tense forms  Chapter 7 – Adjectives and adverbs; comparative and superlative; als and wie  Chapter 8 - Subordinate and relative clauses; commas; present participles  Chapter 9 – Werden and its different uses; passive voice; future and future perfect  Chapter 10 – Personal pronouns; reflexive pronouns; appositions and phrases  Chapter 11 – Prepositions; pronominal phrases; other uses of pronouns; word formation of nouns  Chapter 12 – Subjunctive I; reported speech  Chapter 13 – Subjunctive II; conditional sentences  Chapter 14 – Extended participial phrases  Chapter 15 – Ersatzpassiv constructions and other fake passive constructions  Chapter 16 – Strategies for dealing with longer and older texts  Additional practice texts

    Biography

    Alexander Burdumy is Director of the International Center at Offenburg University of Applied Sciences.