GCE EXAMINERS' REPORTS

Transcription

1 GCE EXAMINERS' REPORTS GERMAN AS/Advanced JANUARY 2014

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3 GERMAN General Certificate of Education January 2014 Advanced Subsidiary/Advanced GN2: LISTENING, READING AND WRITING Principal Examiner: Renate Jahn The paper posed no major problems. Most marks were lost in the translation sections in Aufgabe 5 and in the essays in Aufgabe 6. Aufgabe 1 The majority of candidates coped well with Aufgabe 1, presumably because they were familiar with the concept of Speed Dating. Some marks were lost in question 1 since the word Jugendzeitschriften was not known, some candidates referred to Jungenzeitschriften, others tried to avoid the unknown word and just stated er schreibt, which of course is not precise enough. Similarly er wollte schreiben in answer to Warum hat Johannes einmal beim Speed Dating mitgemacht? is not a direct and unambiguous answer. In answer to question 2 a number of candidates attempted to directly translate the English phrase it is not for her into German when they intended to convey what Anna thought about Speed Dating and therefore wrote es ist nicht für sie, which signifies a different meaning in German. Question 7 posed difficulties for some candidates. They were under the impression that Johannes had failed to ask for the woman s name. Offerings such as er hat sie Name nicht gefragt or er hat seine(!) Name nicht gefragt were not uncommon. In answer to question 8 Worüber will Johannes mit Anna beim Ausgehen nicht sprechen? a sizeable number of candidates copied es gibt bestimmt interessantere Themen als Speed Dating from the listening text which could not be credited since it does not constitute an answer in terms of the question set. The simple answer Speed Dating, however, as given by some candidates was direct and to the point. Aufgabe 2 A number of marks were lost in this exercise. Only a small number of candidates were familiar with the past participle of treffen. The majority of students failed to understand that attraktiv in the second sentence is an adverb and therefore does not require an ending. Even though the whole passage for this exercise was in the past tense, sagt instead of sagte was a common mistake. Aufgabe 3, Teil 1 The majority of candidates achieved high marks in this section. On the whole students checked their answers carefully against the text. Sometimes, however, the word chosen did not concur with the meaning required, e.g. sondern sie studieren auch ein Theaterstück ein, das sie sich selbst aussuchen instead of ausdenken or Bei den Improvisationen hört die Theaterlehrerin die Musik an. instead of hält. 1

4 Aufgabe 3, Teil 2 As in previous years, this exercise was generally done well, with a fair number of candidates scoring high marks. Questions c and e, however, carried a high error rate. Contrary to the students expectations, unemployment amongst young people in Germany is not high. Aufgabe 3, Teil 3 Although most of these comprehension questions were answered successfully some answers lacked precision: According to a number of candidates, the 6 Spaniards will do their apprenticeships in a company which produces machines for the paper industry; but that does just apply to David, not to his five colleagues. In Emsland as an answer to question 1 could of course not be credited either because it is far too general. In answer to question 4, a frequent offering was they will be able to speak German; but again that answer is not precise enough since the Spaniards will only be expected to speak some German. As regards question 5 some answers lacked clarity e.g. it had a great interest. The information that other parts of Germany were very interested in the project and wanted to copy it did not come across. Aufgabe 4 Grammatik In comparison to last year a higher proportion of students struggled with this task, with many achieving less than half of the overall marks. The sentence which caused most difficulty was Weil die Kursteilnehmer kreativ sind (sie phantasievoll an gemeinsamen arbeiten einem Script). Frequent offerings were arbeiten sie gemeinsamen an einem phantasievoll Script. A number of candidates obviously failed to understand that gemeinsamen was an adjective and phantasievoll an adverb. A small minority of candidates even changed the endings with the resulting sentence reading arbeiten sie gemeinsam an einem phantasievollen Script. Even though these students demonstrated a lot of initiative and knowledge of grammar only one mark could be credited for this answer since the original words were not adhered to. Some answers in this section did not make any sense whatsoever, e.g. ist der spannende Ende zu Kurs. Occasionally students lost points because they missed out words such as mehr and auch. In spite of the fact that deshalb constructions featured in previous exams a number of candidates treated this structure as if it was a subordinate clause and therefore placed the verb at the end, e.g. deshalb er auch gerne einen verrückten Elefanten gespielt hat. Aufgabe 5, Teil 1 As in previous years, a number of candidates struggled with this first translation task more than with the second part. Their difficulties again stemmed partly from a lack of basic vocabulary; ziehen, überraschend, Gastfamilien and Ort were unknown to a large number of candidates. It was not uncommon for ziehen in the sentence Andere wollen nicht ins Emsland ziehen to be translated as drag, stay or even show. Frequent offerings for überraschend groß were extremely high, overwhelmingly high. One candidate even stated that the interest was unfathomly high. Ort caused the biggest problems and was translated as resort or east. A small number of candidates interpreted Ort as a place name and therefore translated the sentence as He found work in Ort. As in previous years tenses caused problems as well. A large proportion of students applied the past tense instead of the present in the first sentence.wollen nicht or used the present tense for sie wohnten in dieser Zeit. Aufgabe 5, Teil 2 Overall, candidates scored well on this exercise but some vocabulary items caused problems, e.g. sein neues Zuhause, Praktikum, er freut sich über. A number of candidates tried to steer creatively away from their lack of vocabulary and used the phrase his new house for sein neues Zuhause but that does not convey the intended meaning. Training for Praktikum could not be credited either, only work experience or placement were considered to be acceptable translations. Since most teachers spend a lot of time on topics and students on learning topic related vocabulary it was surprising that only a minority of students translated Praktikum correctly. 2

5 Aufgabe 6 A number of candidates were able to achieve high marks with well-reasoned essays written in clear fluent language, showing sound command of grammar. However, for a higher number of students than before it proved difficult to produce a coherent piece of writing with focus on the title as set. All too often individual sentences were lined up but not connected in any way. Increasingly, spelling and grammar are major stumbling blocks with some students not being able to use personal and possessive pronouns correctly. Passive constructions were rarely correct, and all too often English sentence structure prevailed. This year candidates showed a special preference for title a); but c) was also quite popular. Titles d) and b) were taken up less often. Responses to a) Ein Urlaub muss nicht teuer sein. Es gibt viele Möglichkeiten billig zu reisen. frequently resulted in a general essay on holidays. Other essays on this topic contrasted holidays in GB to foreign travel without looking at the cost of the holidays in sufficient detail. As concerns title c) a number of candidates failed to concentrate on the two aspects of Zeitverschwendung and Geldverdienen. Others just produced a general essay on hobbies without mentioning either Zeitverschwendung nor Geldverdienen and therefore lost a considerable amount of marks. A minority of students managed to start off writing a general hobbies essay and ended up with a health essay or drug essay. They tried to establish a link between the two areas by claiming that for some people it is a hobby to drink alcohol or take drugs, which results in ruining their health. This link is, however, very far-fetched and does not contribute anything to the quality of the response. Title d) made interesting reading in the majority of cases, with some girls arguing that owing to women s lib it is now possible for mothers to combine a fulfilling private life with an interesting job. Especially with respect to title b) candidates frequently contradicted themselves in an attempt to look at both sides of the argument. Those candidates first claimed that in their opinion students benefited from non-traditional subjects and then in the next paragraph expanded on why they found that only traditional subjects will serve students best in the long run. All too often, standard introductions and conclusions do not add anything to the quality of the response since they do not address the specific question under discussion, e.g.: Im folgenden Aufsatz werde ich über das Thema Urlaub schreiben und versuchen zu vermitteln, wie wichtig dieses Thema in den heutigen Gesellschaft ist. Or: In meinem Aufsatz werde ich über das Thema Hobbys sind Zeitverschwendung, ich verdiene mir in meiner Freizeit lieber etwas Geld schreiben. Gleich zu Anfang sollte klargestellt werden, das man nicht viele Geld für Freizeitaktivitäten sparen müssen. GCE German Report January 2014/ED 28/2/14 3

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