Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Zwerge sind zum Lernen

One of the grammar units covered in Deutsch Aktuell 2 is "Infinitives Used as Nouns."  It's a relatively useful topic, but it's not very difficult nor does it take very long to cover.  I usually use it as a starting point to talk about Infinitives with Zu and with Um... zu.  

A problem I was having, though, was that the text doesn't provide much practice for this topic.  There's maybe four short practice exercises total.  So last year, in attempt to give a more comprehensive look at this topic before moving on to the slightly more difficult one, I scoured the internet to see what other people do.  Luckily, I came across this activity.  

Basically, it's a cloze activity that goes along with the song "Steh auf, wenn du auf Zwerge stehst."  Instead of going through the entire set of lyrics, though, it only focuses on the parts that have infinitives.  The song is ridiculous and the video doesn't disappoint either.  If you're looking for an "answer key," you just have to look up the lyrics as a whole.



I like the song and activity, but I did end up adding to it a bit.  I found that some of the verbs were new to students, so I added a matching activity.  I then make students try to guess which verb goes where before we listen to the song and watch the video.  And at the end, I include a short sentence completion activity to get them using the structure on their own.  If you're interested in my version, click here.

There's another video of this song that's on YouTube - not as interesting, but it does include the lyrics.  Good as a self-check for students.



 - Frau Leonard

P.S.
Sadly, I couldn't back-track my steps well enough to find out where exactly I got the original activity from.  If you happen to know the original author or the site where it's found, let me know so I can credit them!

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