About a week ago, my class and I graduated from A-level German. We’ve just started B1, then. The way I see it, this is a good time to reflect on what A-level German lets a person do in Germany. Or, more practically speaking, this is about what a person can do with German after 4 months of studying it in its native environment. Awwwww yeah.
First, let’s refresh over the European language system–all of that A/B/C stuff. The system is divided into three levels–A, B and C–which are themselves each divided into two sub-levels. You start in A, and you progress through C. You need to finish B before you look for a job that requires skill in German to perform–most jobs that don’t belong to Texas Instruments, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft and the like. C, I’ve been told, is meant to give students an academic grasp of German. My teachers have told me that C1 could be beneficial to those who want to be sophisticated, but C2 is almost completely pointless.
So, now I’m at the beginning of B1–the beginning of the level that transforms people from residents into professionals.
Come to think of it, “resident” is a really good word for describing what level A (4 months of training) has done for me. After 4 months, I can speak German at people, rather than with them. I can listen to simple requests and advice and respond in either really simple or really broken manners. For example, I can do these things:
- Order at a restaurant
- Pay for things
- Ask for directions to places
- Introduce myself
- Tell people why I’m here (see my first post)
- Look for a job (but not interview for one)
- Discuss politics just a little bit (who’s running, party platforms, tell someone I can’t vote because I’m not a citizen)
- Navigate public transportation (which train? when does it get here? oh God, it’s late? do I need to transfer? are there taxis?)
- Tell people what I do for a living
- Tell people about my plans to go back to school
- Ask what a word means
- Request that the speaker slow down or simplify their words
I can maybe do some other things as well, but those are the things that I have to do a lot.
Also, it’s good to keep in mind I can’t exactly call the contexts in which I employ those abilities “conversations.” Rather, it’s an exchange of simple sentences that both of us understand. I don’t call them “conversations,” because at least one of us is always thinking “that’s probably not exactly what they mean, but it’s close enough to inform my next action.”
A is designed to bring a person to functioning order within German society, then. It serves to ward off foreigner-terror (that’s terror of being a foreigner, not a terror of foreigners) and help one convey that they’re trying to learn the language.
I expect B to make me a conversationalist. I’ve looked ahead in the lessons, and I’m seeing crucial pieces to the conversation puzzle that were missing in A. Namely, I’m seeing complex sentences–main clause plus subordinate clause. Command of subordinate clauses is a huge difference between a speaker who appears “conversational,” and one who does not. With that ability, I can vary up my sentence structures, which will make me look confident.
Oh boy, is that going to be fun.