'AS' Exam Briefings
DON'T waste time getting a working walkman. Bring one or borrow one and test it before the exam. If you have to borrow one, be sure to BRING YOUR OWN NEW BATTERIES.
Check each question to see what language you have to answer in. There will be at least 2 "transfer of meaning" exercises one INTO ENGLISH and one INTO GERMAN. Choose the wrong language and you lose 20 marks at once and that will cost you 2/3 grades!
Well done on the timing of the mock paper. However we will not be there on the day warning you when to move on. Watch the clock in conjunction with the instructions. If you have spare time at the end, once you have checked you grammar in the letter, check the listening again. It can be easy to miss things here. NEVER leave a gap! Guess if necessary. If you change your mind, cross out your old answer clearly.
Watch out for
distracters and listen for fine detail, especially qualifiers. Problems were:
Q1b: A lot of you missed this one – “ein Werbespot”. This exercise was generally well done.
Q2a:
Half the
people who went to Liechtenstein via Zürich didn’t realise they were in
Switzerland!!! B
Q2d: as they had won “alle Titel” they
must have won the first one!! B
Q2e: “gering” =” tiny”, so not correct “einen Sieg erwartet” =” expecting a
win”. A
Q3:
Badly done, most got only 2.
Q3a: The accident was in “Kufstein” so F
Q3b: Therefore the “Urlauber” = “holidaymaker”
couldn’t come from there so F
Q3c: „Stich einer Biene” (bee sting) = “von einer Biene gestochen” so R
Q3d:
He was
„beim Arzt“ when he collapsed so F
Q3e: No mention of any timings so N
Q3f: “Der
Notarzt des Hubschraubers ‘Christphorus 4’ ” must have come in his helicopter! So R
Q3g:: “retten”
= save but actually
“sie kämpften
umsonst” =” fought in vain” so F
This was very well
done. The only problems were:
Q4cb:
„gestritten“ = „nicht einig“ = not in agreement Some did not spot the „nicht“.
Q4d: „ähnlich“ = “similar“ and came straight from the text.
Q5a: Half fell into the trap of writing “VG”
instead of “WG 57”!!
Q5d: Still some cannot spell „Kunde“. Don’t mix genders: ein
guter Kunde! (m). There
were too many silly variations of adjective. Bankrott (bankrupt) was not
recognised either.
Q5e : The full answer required „bei der
Buchhaltung war vieles nicht in Ordnung.”
Q5g: Hardly anyone got this “Er hat ihn
(den Katalog) erhalten/bekommen..”
Q5h:
3 marks for „500 italienische Kaffeebecher“. Do
not confuse „Kaffee“ with “Café“.
Q5i:
The pattern
(Muster) was “Tulpen” (tulips) this being Holland. So “A” was the answer.
Q5j: The second part of the answer was “gute Verkaufsziffern” (good slales figures).
For a good
language mark 4 out of 5
you must show “consistent accuracy with only minor errors in spelling and
transcription.”
Cases, adjective agreements, wrong gender when it was
clear to hear and spelling and VTEs let you down badly here.
Slight tweaking of the taped material was all that was
needed. BUT BEWARE – YOU MUST
NOT LIFT MORE THAN 5 WORDS FROM THE TAPE WITHOUT ALTERING THEM.
Major spelling
problems were MISSING CAPITAL
LETTERS for nouns
Kaffeebecher and Kunde
World of Work:
Reading
Q6:
The idea of this was to write a memo for you boss. IN ENGLISH. This is where you lose 20 marks in one go if
you do not check carefully! Believe
it or not there are 5 marks for the quality of your English spelling
punctuation and grammar. The only
spelling problems were “personnel” and “grateful”. There was some poor English vocab eg “reference” for “referee” and “birth name” for “maiden name” or “nee”.
You need to be BUSINESSLIKE! So no chatty style eg “toll”If you look,
the memo is headed for you! Your task
is to interpret the letter to a third party so think carefully
about the use of I/we and he/she and us/you.
Here
“wir/uns/unser” referred to Andreas
Scholl and Pizza Pronto. You should
therefore refer to “him” and the company as “he/they/his//their”.
Similarly you
work for an English translation agency and should use “we/our company/us”.
There was a
direct reference to “Ihnen” ie “you” (Mr Page).
There were 18
points in the text that the examiners were looking for, and 15 marks, so you
could not afford to miss many. Check
therefore how many marks this is worth and match it with that many points and
more if possible. Numbers and dates or
times are a key feature so include them all.
The main
comprehension problems were:
Bewerbungsschreiben=
l(letter of) application
Übersetzerin=
translator
Dolmetscherin= interpreter
Wirtschaft=
business/economics
The idea here is
to transfer an English memo or fax into a German one. You are not required to give a
personal opinion.
Remember you
are given a lot of help with genders and spelling of the key words from the
text of question 6 where you will find the vocabularz you need..
Again you need to be BUSINESSLIKE! So no chatty style! Using the Du and Ihr forms is regarded as
a major serious error and congratulations you all avoided that trap.
You MUST therefore
use Sie + Ihr
(possessive) and Ihnen!
The marks are
given for Quality of Language only. However, your German is assessed and then marks are deducted if you fail to
complete all aspects of the task. There
were 10 points to be made and a half mark was deducted for every one
missing. So if your grammar is poor and
you only score 4, if you miss a couple of points you are down to 3. Make sure therefore that you cover
every task. Tick them off as you go.
Major grammar mistakes were ADJECTIVE
ENDINGS „ein schlechter Tag“
“das“ instead of “Ich denke dass”
PLURAL VERB: eg wir
werden/können
DATE: „vom 1. September 1986 bis
zum 31.Juli 1988“
IMPERFECT TENSE
„hatte“ „waren“ hieß“
VTEs and Infinitives at end of sentence
Spelling problems were CAPITAL
LETTER for “Sie/Ihnen”
“empfehlen”,
“weil”
A good quality of language mark requires
“ambitious use of a variety of complex sentence patterns” ie subordinate
clauses, relative clauses, subjunctives and passives. I was pleased to see some good use of the
subjunctive however most of you headed for a low mark, as your sentences were
too simple. If they are simple they
must be accurate to
compensate.
M C G P 11 05 04