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GUIDANCE ON IMPROVING THE STANDARD OF ALEVEL GERMAN ESSAYS
GUIDANCE ON IMPROVING THE STANDARD OF A LEVEL GERMAN ESSAYS
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AQA GERMAN A LEVELTranslation exercise
EXTRACT FROM AN EXAMINERS REPORT
**Students were required to translate five sentences from English into German. Each sentence was
broken into six parts, with one mark awarded for each correct element. The translation exercise proved
to be a good discriminating exercise.
There were a number of students who did not attempt any part of some sentences. This was regrettable,
as each element is discrete and can gain credit. Therefore, students who had been encouraged to write
what they could often benefited.
The theme for the translation this year was Artistic culture in the German-speaking world, with the sub-
theme Kunst und Architektur im Alltag being the focus of the exercise.
The reading passage before the sentences provided useful vocabulary, structures and verbs needed
for effective completion of the exercise. Students were required to manipulate verb tenses or change
cases and adjective endings. This was done with a varying degree of success. It was not always possible
to provide all alternative translations in the mark scheme. Responses were given credit, as long as the
message was conveyed in accurate German. Some of the examples below help to show this point. The
translation sentences required a high level of grammatical accuracy, including capitalisation,
emphasising the need for clear handwriting in order to distinguish between upper and lower case.
1. 10 Jahre was often used instead of Jahrzehnt and this was perfectly acceptable.
2. Treffung was a common mistranslation for Treffen.
3. Von berühmten deutschen Persönlichkeiten im Architekturbereich was awarded 2 marks because of
innovative combination of two elements of the question.
4. In the first part of the sentence Auftrag, Aufgabe, Rolle and Job were all accepted but not Beruf as
this was deemed to mean something else in this context. Städten was accepted for ‘cities’.
5. Some better answers used ein hässliches Stadtzentrum, showing good knowledge of grammar in a
correct response. Nicht viele Leute was offered by many students and was accepted as an
alternative to wenige Leute. Geburtsort was not widely known at all.
6. Word order was a clear problem in this sentence, even when students correctly used the perfect
tense of verstehen. ‘Annual’ caused problems, sometimes with the item of vocabulary itself, finding
the correct adjective ending or the omission of the umlaut. However, thoughtful responses included
die Konferenz, die jedes Jahr stattfindet and this, of course, was given due credit.
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