Language Program

Director of Language Program: Glenn S. Levine

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE PROGRAM is designed to provide a lively and stimulating environment for German study. We offer a six-course progression at the lower division (1A-B-C, 2A-B-C). Our goals for the entire program are simple: we will help you learn/acquire German at a basic level, focusing on speaking, understanding, reading, writing, and cultural literacy. In the process we make use of the most advanced pedagogical methods of foreign language learning, avid internet resources, German-language TV and films, German "pulp fiction", and more. But we also have a GRANDER GOAL than simply "helping you acquire basic German". We design our courses so that, if you were to land in a German-speaking country after six quarters of German, you would be able to interact and communicate in German in an easy, enjoyable, and stress-free manner. Additionally, we want you to acquire solid, intermediate level reading and writing skills in German. Lastly, the program should serve as the solid foundation for advanced study of German, or for the study of German for business or scientific purposes.

THREE BELIEFS or assumptions guide our approach to teaching German here at UCI. First, you learn by doing. Thus, our methodology allows you to take an active part in each class, to hear, respond to, read, and speak a lot of German. As a result, the quality of the education you receive in this class will depend on the amount and quality of your own effort, as well as that of the other students.

Second, you - as a university student - should be entirely responsible for your own learning. Hence, in this course we attempt to move away from the traditional (and boring!) roles of instructor as provider of information and student as the 'receptacle' of that information. Instead, we see the instructor as the mediator of information and you as the gatherer of information and acquirer of skills.

Third, foreign language learning is the development of a skill, not the acquisition of a body of knowledge. It can be compared with learning to play a musical instrument: You begin with the very basics and through study and practice you advance to ever more complex music. The key word is practice, and this brings us back to our first belief or assumption, namely that you learn by doing. If you practice as much and as well as you can (we estimate about 1½ hours per class hour), you will find the acquisition of German extremely rewarding. Conversely, if you don't practice enough or practice only half-heartedly, you may find the experience frustrating, or worse, boring.

GO ABROAD! Students in our courses also have the opportunity and are encouraged to immerse themselves in the German language and German or Austrian culture for a semester or year through the University of California's EDUCATION ABROAD PROGRAM (EAP) in Göttingen, Bayreuth, Berlin or Vienna. There are study and work/internship programs available for all language levels (even beginning).

ADVANCED STUDY. After completing two years of language instruction, a student is ready to begin upper-division work which consists of "advanced composition" and upper-division coursework in German literature, linguistics and cultural studies. At UCI we offer a rich variety of courses in the upper division in German literature, cultural studies and linguistics. All these courses are taught by internationally recognized scholars and award-winning instructors. For example, one of our faculty members, Ruth Kluger, is the author of a current German bestseller, the account of her experiences as a young girl in Auschwitz. The book has won four major literary prizes in Austria and Germany (so far). Other faculty research areas include poetry, philosophical topics, contemporary literature, decadence, capital punishment, and second-language acquisition. Recent upper-division courses include: "Science, Society, the State: The German Experience," "German Literature and Music," "The Decadent Imagination," "Germanic Culture". As you can gather from this listing, we are a diverse group of scholars and teachers, united in our commitment to undergraduate education.