German: Reading German for Research Purposes Prerequisite Course

*Taught Online*  The purpose of this course is to bring students with no background in German to the level of reading proficiency that is necessary to complete GRMN 33333 successfully and hence to pass the ARCA (Academic Reading Comprehension Assessment) in their respective fields. In order to attain that level of proficiency (intermediate-mid in the ACTFL scale), students will learn the basics of German grammar and syntax - roughly the equivalent of what students in the regular, four-skills German courses learn after one year of instruction. The grammar study is oriented toward reading proficiency, meaning that students will apply the knowledge they acquire to scanning and decoding texts. It is thus primarily through reading, and reading attentively, that students consolidate their knowledge of German grammar and vocabulary. The primary focus of each course module will be on the morphological and syntactic markers of various structures, the markers that students need to be able to recognize structures not only in didactic example sentences but also in the flow of reading authentic texts - not only in textbook "captivity," but also in the "wilderness" of academic discourse. To that end, students will also acquire a reading (passive) knowledge of some basic German vocabulary -- both general vocabulary and words belong to particular parts of speech (e.g. in order to be able to recognize prepositional phrases, one must know the prepositions). Finally, students will also begin to gain the more advanced reading skills, exercised on longer texts, that they will continue to develop in GRMN 33333. For this course component, we will begin with reading comprehension assignments using edited texts from the textbook on a variety of topics. As the course progresses, we will add more authentic texts on general academic subjects.