GCE EXAMINERS' REPORTS. GERMAN AS/Advanced

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1 GCE EXAMINERS' REPORTS GERMAN AS/Advanced JANUARY 2011

2 Statistical Information This booklet contains summary details for each unit: number entered; maximum mark available; mean mark achieved; grade ranges. N.B. These refer to 'raw marks' used in the initial assessment, rather than to the uniform marks reported when results are issued. Annual Statistical Report The annual Statistical Report (issued in the second half of the Autumn Term) gives overall outcomes of all examinations administered by WJEC.

3 GERMAN General Certificate of Education January 2011 Advanced Subsidiary/Advanced Chief Examiner: Renate Jahn, M.A., formerly Rydal Penrhos Independent School Unit Statistics The following statistics include all candidates entered for the unit, whether or not they 'cashed in' for an award. The attention of centres is drawn to the fact that the statistics listed should be viewed strictly within the context of this unit and that differences will undoubtedly occur between one year and the next and also between subjects in the same year. Unit Entry Max Mark Mean Mark GN Grade Ranges A 76 B 68 C 60 D 52 E 44 N.B. The marks given above are raw marks and not uniform marks. 1

4 GN2 Listening, Reading and Writing There were no significant differences between the standard achieved last January and January The paper posed the usual difficulties with marks being lost in Aufgabe 3 and in Aufgabe 5 in both parts of the translation. In Aufgabe 1 a number of candidates lost marks because they did not read the questions carefully enough. Question 2 for instance stated that two examples needed to be given for one point but nonetheless candidates frequently just mentioned one item. Others gave answers that did not satisfy the demands of the question. All these questions are prefixed by an interrogative pronoun that asks for specific information which may be contained in the text as such or may have to be deduced from the context. For example, warum? asks for a reason, was für? asks for characteristics etc. It may, of course, be perfectly adequate in many cases to give very short and precise answers, but they have to be sufficiently detailed to answer the question in a meaningful way. In question 6 (Was findet die Presse an dem Magazin besonders gut?), Fotos or Texte on its own could therefore not be awarded a point since no qualifier was used here: photos and texts are nothing particularly new in magazines. However, a number of candidates did make use of qualifiers, e.g. wegen der wunderbar Fotos, but still failed to score a point because the answer did not address the question was?. By the same token, Ausland gelesen makes no sense and could not be accepted as an answer to question 5 Woher wissen wir, dass die Zeitschrift erfolgreich ist? whereas sie wird im Ausland gelesen or Ausländer lesen sie is perfectly adequate. A more amusing answer for this question was weil es nicht für Hausfrauen ist which may be true but was not supported by the text. Question 4 posed the greatest difficulties. Most candidates did not understand the term bunte Mischung, and guesses such as buntermischung or Untermischung were not uncommon. In Aufgabe 2 more candidates than before achieved full marks. Strangely enough, gefunden created the greatest difficulties even though it is a very common past participle. Aufgabe 3, Teil 1 Some candidates analysed the words in the box carefully and made use of language indicators in the text before setting out to tackle this task. There are, however, still a number of candidates who fail to analyse the sentences, fail to check their answers against the text, or use their common sense. A high proportion of candidates, for example, had the Zuschauerinnen instead of Spielerinnen play against the Iranian team (qu.9). Some of the better candidates, having used Spielerinnen in qu.1, realised at this point that there was a difference between Spielerinnen and Mitglieder (required in qu.1) and made the appropriate correction. The same is true for (8) where blöde fits grammatically but is not supported by the text. In qu.10, whilst it is conceivable that a manager might be intoxicated during a match, the answer auch das Publikum war mit vollem Manager dabei, was not suggested by the text. Nor was another amusing and fairly frequent answer in response to qu.7: sowohl Kopftücher als auch keine Trikots tragen. Candidates should resist the temptation to insert a word which seems plausible at first sight. Question 5 could be an illustration of the point in question: faulenzen seems to be a likely choice in connection with Freizeit, but it was not backed up by the text. Aufgabe 3, Teil 2 A good number of candidates scored high marks in this exercise which obliged them to analyse the text very carefully. Only (e) Stefans Eltern gaben ihm kein Essen and (h) Die Jugendlichen schlafen im Müll carried a high error rate. 2

5 Aufgabe 4 A good proportion of students demonstrated sound command of word order, but quite a few struggled with more complex constructions such as um sich international verständigen zu können. Many students were unsure of the position of können, which resulted in answers such as um sich international zu verständigen können (1 mark was awarded here) or they simply left out können. This was, of course, a complex construction which very good candidates did complete correctly. Even though past exams all included deshalb sentences a high number of students failed to apply the correct word order and it was not uncommon to read deshalb das Fußballspiel in Teheran war so erfolgreich. It seemed as though deshalb had been overlooked entirely. Leaving out words by mistake led to marks being lost in many cases, and students are advised to check their answers carefully for the correct number of words. A widespread common mistake was to interpret gemeinsam and erfolgreich as adjectives even though they were not inflected, which led to answers such as verbringen sie ihre gemeinsam Freizeit or war das so erfolgreich Fußballspiel in Teheran. Variation was possible in some phrases, e.g. verbrachten sie ihre Freizeit gemeinsam / verbrachten sie gemeinsam ihre Freizeit. The same goes for the position of sich in the previous example: um sich international verständigen zu können/ um international sich verständigen zu können. Aufgabe 5, Teil 1 This part of the exam proved to be difficult for a number of candidates. In most cases that difficulty could be attributed to a lack of basic vocabulary, and weglaufen, erscheinen, gewöhnlich and in Ruhe lassen posed problems despite the fact that all these words are part of the GCSE vocabulary list, at least in their simplex forms. Quite a variety of renderings were offered for ein ganz gewöhnliches Jugendzentrum such as a homely or a live-in youth centre. The phrase in Ruhe gelassen was translated as left in silence, left in quiet to pass time and one student wrote, with ominous foreboding, the young people at the Zinkhütte will eventually be at peace. With hindsight, weitgehend was a word that students are unlikely to know at this level, and students lost no marks if it was mistranslated or omitted altogether. A number of students found it difficult to cope with er in jeder kommt und geht, wann er will and offered the non-english translation when he wants. Aufgabe 5, Teil 2 Major stumbling blocks for this translation passage were individual words such as Erfolg, beobachtete, irgendwann.. Even herumhängen caused problems although it could be translated into English quite literally. A number of students attempted to guess the contents of the passage but no points can be awarded if the idea of a particular sentence is not conveyed accurately, e.g. the Zinkhütte does not want to be a statistics or Mike goes to school three times a week and lives in the Zinkhütte. Students should be encouraged to look back at the text from which the passage is taken so that they are reminded of the contents. 3

6 Aufgabe 6 By far the most popular essay title turned out to be question b) Menschen, die sich gesund ernähren, haben keinen Spaß am Leben! Wie denkst du darüber? Unfortunately quite a high proportion of students failed to understand the word ernähren and thus interpreted the title to mean that people who lead healthy lives do not have fun. Owing to that misunderstanding, or simply because that was what they had learned, students launched into the topic of sports and health and in many cases only mentioned in passing the two main aspects of healthy eating and enjoying life. They could, of course, not be awarded a high mark for understanding and quality of response since there was a lack of focus on the question set. Teachers always stress that candidates are ill advised to select essay titles they do not fully understand. However, every year there are students who do not heed that piece of advice, choose the question that matches the topic they have prepared best, and write an essay that may contain topic related information (not specifically credited under the current marking scheme) but misses the point of the question altogether. Quite often that also leads to nonsensical statements such as the one which occurred in various essays Menschen, die gesund sind, sind nicht krank. The second most popular essay was question a) In der Freizeit sollte man etwas Sinnvolles machen und nicht herumhängen. Ist das auch deine Meinung? This was more successful even though a number of candidates focused on their leisure time generally rather than the aspect of etwas Sinnvolles machen which a few took to mean sinful. Question d) Ich trage, was ich will, ich lasse mich nicht von der Mode manipulieren! Wie denkst du darüber? was the third most popular essay. Unfortunately, a very high proportion of students discussed this in terms of pros and cons, which complicated matters because the question did not lend itself to this type of discussion as, indeed, none of the other questions really did. A good proportion of students therefore discussed the pros and cons of fashion generally and neglected the aspect of manipulation altogether. Better candidates discussed to what extent they felt manipulated by fashion and to what extent they were free to wear whatever they chose and why they chose to do so. Question c) was only chosen by a minority of candidates. Some of them related this to the reading text quite successfully. However, it should be remembered that referring back to the reading text is perfectly acceptable and may, indeed, be interesting depending on the candidate s argument; but lifting whole sentences verbatim from the text is not. Besides, lifted sentences are almost guaranteed to not focus on the question set. Quite a number of essays were over-loaded with so-called enrichment phrases, and some passages were therefore almost void of meaning, as the following authentic examples may illustrate: Alles in allem springt es mir ins Auge, dass gesund ernähren also ein zweischneidiges Schwert ist. Or:...und ich kann kein Spaß am Leben haben, und es wird für mich groß geschrieben. Or: Es ist nicht zu leugnen, daß gesund essen und gesund Lebenstil wichtig in der heutigen Welt sind. An dieser viel diskutierten Frage scheiden sich die Geister. None of those phrases adds any substance to the essay. 4

7 The most common linguistic difficulties found in essays were: a) Lack of knowledge of possessive and personal pronouns. b) No knowledge of passive, which was most noticeable in the fashion essay. c) Lack of sentence structure, sentences were left as fragments, the verb was often left out. d) Word order problems. e) Mix-up of dass and das, mix up of eigene and einige. f) Wrong (English) use of beide, e.g. beide junge und alte Leute instead of sowohl...als auch. g) Wrong use of ich fühle, instead of ich denke /meine/ glaube /bin der Meinung/ Auffassung/ Ansicht/ Überzeugung/ bin überzeugt but NOT schlage vor. h) Lack of inversion after zum Beispiel, also, deshalb and many more. i) Wrong (English) use of infinitive construction, e.g. Die Zeitschriften sagen, was zu tragen instead of was man tragen soll. There was plenty of evidence that German is not spoken often enough in the classroom, which would enable candidates to draw more readily and to much greater effect on the limited stock of lexis and idioms they have acquired at this stage. Many of the essays contained little of the candidates views and rather a lot of learnt, often detailed information that was irrelevant in the context of the question set. GCE German Examiners Report January 2011 / LG

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