OSU German?

[justkeepswimming]

I've looked through many posts re: OSU German... how are those who are taking it this year feeling? From what I have read it seems that if you have a "dud" student/teacher you can request another ... and that you often have to ask for the weekly call-ins to include conversational German as opposed to just worksheet review... What else do we need to know?

 

 

I have an upcoming 8th grader who wants to start German this coming year. She will also be taking French for the 2nd year... would this be a good choice? If she takes one class per year, she'll need to start this yearto reach the AP level?

[Running the race]

My two boys are doing well in the class. I'm not sure how much German they are learning to speak. I think you are right on about the weekly Skype call. Since I am more interested in checking off the foreign language requirement, I don't worry too much about it right now. My kids have way too much stress in their other classes to make German more complicated.

[quark]

A few things:

1. Have their phone number written somewhere convenient so that your student can call them if he has issues or glitches that he can't fix on his own e.g. there were one or two occasions when my son couldn't get the audio on the sound files/ flash movies to work despite checking everything he knew to check -- I make him call them so he can learn to fix issues on his own

2. They suggest using Firefox...there were many glitches when my son accidentally logged in with IE a few times in the earlier weeks

3. I didn't find the Skype sessions for German 1 useful at all. The sessions were way too basic and the student instructor was not using much German at all. I have a few semesters of intro college German behind me and was able to challenge my son better so we skipped the sessions for German 1. Still undecided whether to do them for German 2.

4. If your child takes more than one school year to complete the course, be aware that they do change the Teacher log in and passwords so you'll have to request the new password in order to log in to check your student's grades etc

5. I think I remember that one or two times, the answer keys didn't always line up with the corresponding worksheets/ info sheets...I might be mistaken but I vaguely remember this for German 1. Just a few times though and I think I brought it up with them and they may have corrected it by now.

6. They have fill-in worksheets (MS Word Doc) instead of pdf worksheets too so you don't necessarily need to print all worksheets if you want to save paper

 

About all I can think of right now. Good luck!

[Joan in GE]

My two boys are doing well in the class. I'm not sure how much German they are learning to speak.

 

Interesting because for my two, they really liked to practice talking with each other.

 

We would do the class activities together...Have you looked in the teacher's notes for the activities? And they would frequently replay to me some of the little role plays and show me how well they were learning....

 

This reminds me of this old threadabout language learning for fluency...

 

Our experience is the following...

 

For I and II they really liked it because of all the activities, videos, etc. III they really disliked, due to the readings - Faust and Die Ilse Weg (probably spelling that wrong) - two story lines which are not very uplifting to say the least. IV dd is loving again and breezing through it.

 

We've stayed with it (in III) because I don't have time to devote to filling in gaps, mixing and matching, etc (in this subject) and there are grades, etc. Plus dd wants to do the AP, so I figured this is programmed to lead to that. I think she will need to learn a fair amount of writing skills next year as they are a bit lacking. But because verbal fluency is so emphasized in Europe, it was most important for me that dc's verbal skills were developed first.

 

HTH,

Joan

ETA - PS, could you tag your thread please?

[Running the race]

Interesting because for my two, they really liked to practice talking with each other.

 

We would do the class activities together...Have you looked in the teacher's notes for the activities? And they would frequently replay to me some of the little role plays and show me how well they were learning....

 

 

 

I wish my two wanted to talk to each other! I've been complely hands-off with them. I'm sure the quality of their leaning would improve dramatically with my involvement. Unfortunately, my older son is completely overwhelmed with his other courses, so he doesn't have extra time to devote to German.

 

I'll have to check out the teacher notes for the activities.

[justkeepswimming]

Hmmmm, I wonder if this will be a course that will get dd through the German - considering that I know NO German and won't have the time to take the class alongside her. It's really disappointing to read the problems with the Student-Teachers because in the description of the class, it sounds as if they'll have a fair amount of chit-chat time in German. :mellow:

[Joan in GE]

Just to tell you, I don't know any German (I can hardly count the few words that I do know as anything) and was still able to guide the teacher - student activities....They're made for teachers who don't really know German but have to lead the class....

 

My dc got enough time for chatting, but they were motivated. I think if the student (and parent) are motivated, it helps...reading the fluency thread linked above might give you ideas...

 

Joan