German With Happy: Beginners

Prerequisites

None! The German With Happy Beginners' Course is suitable for absolute or near-beginners. If you've learned German a little before you may well find you benefit from recapping the basics from the start. Whatever your level, you'll be proud of what you've achieved after eight short weeks.

You should, however, have strong written and spoken English and understand that your success will ultimately depend on the engagement you bring.

Course Content

Practical skills

The German With Happy Beginner's course aims to immediately furnish you with practical German you could use on a short holiday or business trip in a German-speaking country.

We'll make friends and introduce ourselves, talk about our families, order food, navigate the railway system and much more! Reading, writing, speaking and listening are the four competencies we'll need to get by in German and we'll be building all of them!

Grammar

We'll go beyond just learning phrases; you could, after all, use your smartphone if that's all you cared about. If your goal is to go on to actually master the German language, we'll be laying the foundations for that dream. To understand grammar is to understand how German works: a thrilling prospect. We will banish forever the idea that German grammar need be difficult or boring by taking things one gentle step at a time with lots of humour.

To start with, we'll be gaining an understanding of the German alphabet and pronunciation rules and numbers, times and dates. We'll meet the three genders of German nouns and learn how verbs work together with the persons of grammar. We'll also start to understand the parts of speech and how they work together in sentences.

Cultural context

Language and culture are impossible to separate: the way we think influences our language and our language influences how we think and behave. You can't become competent at German without understanding a fair bit about life in Germany and her neighbouring countries.

In the Beginners' course, German cuisine, public transport, public holidays, music, the shared history of German and English and many more topics will weave their way through our lessons.

Every term, students are encouraged to watch a German-language TV show on SBS On Demand, one episode per week. Together we'll use this as an opportunity to immerse ourselves in German-speaking culture and explore the issues raised, as well as surfacing an abundance of interesting and useful vocabulary and phrases.

The Fun Way

Learning feels very easy if you're enjoying yourself and your tutor believes language lessons need never be dull. The course has been known to feature German food, drinking songs, pop-punk and comedy with Happy's trusty guitar, and much, much more.

Furthermore, the experience of learning together with a group is simply incomparable for languages. You'll take away far more than German skills: you'll make a whole new friendship group!

Next steps

After completing the one-term Beginners' course, the overwhelming majority of students progress into the Continuers' course, and eventually into Intermediate. There is no dead-end here: some current students have been studying German With Happy for years!