We are now halfway through the first semester. The small size of the group means that it is run as an informal tutorial. Each time we have conversation in German. One of our members whose first tongue is German has a particular interest in our pronunciation. Pleasingly, there is now often just one or no correction required.

Our comprehension lags somewhat, but our vocabulary is ever expanding. This month the theme was around major life events, particularly death and dying. The focus emanated from discussion around the many POW camps around Tatura in the 1940s, the video and photographic records in the Tatura Museum and the subsequent German War Cemetery there.
Members contributed a piece about the train numbering system for reading and translating and another by T. S. Eliot for dictation and translation.

By way of revision, we did a large word find puzzle on new words thus far. Two more songs have been re-visited.

Pauline Bailey

The topic for the second session of the year was written communication. We began with a piece of dictation, which proved to be unanimously challenging.  Members self corrected against the original. The goal is that by year’s end the number of errors will be greatly reduced or eliminated!

We then dissected the piece and discussed strategies for making sense of the writing.

Everyone in turn then read successive paragraphs aloud, having pronunciation corrected at the end and a group discussion about the translation.

In an effort to extend our vocabulary beyond the basic, the topic of the built environment was chosen for the second session of the month. We began with housing, then different other buildings and finished with a historical piece about the construction and subsequent opening of the Mont Blanc tunnel in 1965. Mt Blanc is the highest mountain in Europe and the 11.7 km tunnel crosses the border between Italy and France.

Our next session is on Tuesday 13 April, 12.15  - 1.45 pm.
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Pauline Bailey