German Language – Written & Spoken

Introduction:

German is one of the oldest languages in Europe. German language (Deutsch) belongs to the Western group of the Germanic language along with English, Frisian, and Dutch. The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers’ first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century bc.  German is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, the majority of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Südtirol (South Tyrol) region of Italy, the Opole Voivodship of Poland, the eastern part of Belgium, parts of Romania, the Alsace (Elsass) region of France and parts of Denmark.

There are about 118 millions of German speakers including native and second language speakers. Being the official language of seven countries, it is considered to be one of the most spoken language in the European Union. As a written language German is quite uniform, however there are two dialectal groups for spoken German, namely: High German and Low German. The difference is mainly in the sound system/ consonants.  High German, the language of the southern highlands of Germany, is the official written language.

 

Importance & Opportunity:

Germany is known to be the second largest exporter in the world. Being the number one in terms of its economy in Europe and number four worldwide, its economy is comparable to the world’s Spanish speaking countries combined. Knowing to speak and write German will definitely increase your possibility to acquire a job in Germany or German companies in your own country.

As a matter of fact Mauritius has growing tourism and hospitality industry. Proficiency in German language (or any other third language) will be a real boost in acquiring a job in this field. Nowadays the number of German speaking tourists has increased worldwide thus creating more job opportunities to meet up the demand.

Germans are the world leaders in engineering and the German language is the second most used in the scientific field. Germany is also a big contributor to research and development, thus there are opportunities in various fields (not only in tourism sector) when learning German.

Germany awards a generous number of scholarships and other support to study in Germany. Working holiday visas are available for young foreigners from a range of countries, and special visas are offered to skilled workers and professionals.

 

Course Content:

The core curriculum the language will be standardized based on the Common European Framework for Languages.

The competencies mentioned below will give learners all the abilities, skills, aptitude, and expertise needed to be a proficient and fluent speaker. Our goal for our students is to achieve full competency in four different fields of communication. This is what we call the 4SC’s.

Semantic competency: the speaker must know the linguistic systems: pronunciation, vocabulary, language structure and syntax. However, there should be no time limits when learning a language. This knowledge should be a natural result of the linguistic methods used in class and through daily interactive activities.

Speech competency: the selection, sequence and arrangement of ideas expressed must be eloquent and clear. It deals with the language structure, articulation and coherence of words.

Strategic competency: the speaker must have strategies that help fill in blanks in a conversation; that is, the way the person finds ways around gaps in understanding a speaker, or expressing an idea.

Social-cultural competency: related to extra-linguistic elements, social-cultural competency deals with style properties (voice inflexions, tone, etc.) and non-verbal language (hands or eyes movements, and, in general, how the body moves in a determinate conversation).

 

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