Learn German in Melbourne

Guten Tag!

All our languages including German are taught using the communicative method, which means that the majority of class time is spent on improving students’ oral skills. Given that the average class size at Lyceum is about six, each student can spend a large share of the overall class time on speaking. Our native-speaking teachers make it possible to rapidly achieve a good accent.

By the end of 60 hours of tuition (levels 1-4), students are able to cope with the following everyday situations:

• Social interaction
• Planning outings
• Getting about town
• Shopping and other transactions, such as the bank and post office
• Booking accommodation and talking about the home

This level is recommended to people who wish to travel to a German-speaking country such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland or tiny Liechtenstein, and also for those who plan to use German with their family and friends here in Melbourne.

As part of your course, our teachers will encourage you to seek out the German speaking community in Melbourne, in order to help you practice your speaking and listening skills. Melbourne has a large population of German speakers, which affords you great opportunities to practice the language and learn about the culture.
Teachers will give you information about the German radio and television programmes, and newspapers available in Melbourne, and also about German festivals & events in Melbourne.

As a group you will pool information about the best Melbourne German restaurants, German food stores, bookshops and German clubs to help you further immerse yourself in the culture. With Lyceum's help, groups often plan outings together.

Lyceum has a very good retention rate for German students. Beyond the recommended sixty hours of tuition, most students continue on to Intermediate level and Advanced, where naturally spoken German is used in a wide range of topics, and includes all grammatical structures. By this stage students can converse with an excellent level of fluency.

Each level of study at Lyceum corresponds to 15 hours of adult tuition, or twelve to eighteen months at high school. Check our course guide to see which level would suit you best, then call us to discuss and confirm.

German Language Course - Level 1

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 1-2)

Content of Classes:

• General overview of Germany and the German language
• The alphabet and how to pronounce German sounds
• Greetings, welcomes, and the situations in which to use formal, or informal speech
• How to introduce yourself, giving your profession, nationality and hobbies
• Sentences in the present tense, for example 'I come from Australia'
• Conjugation of the irregular verbs "haben" und "sein" = to have and to be
• Sentence structure for affirmative sentences and questions
• How to ask questions
• How to agree or disagree
• Pronouns: how to say 'I', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'we', 'they', etc
• Introduction to gender in German nouns. Der, die, das: three ways to say 'the'
• The numbers up to 1000. Putting them into practice by asking each other for:
  Telephone numbers, addresses, times of the day, age
• Possessive pronouns: 'mine', 'yours', 'his' etc.

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Level 2

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 3-4)

Content of Classes:

• Eating out: Ordering in restaurant, translating menus
• Introduction to the case system in general and the accusative in particular
• Vocabulary for days, times, weeks, months, seasons, festivals
• Vocabulary: Typical German foods
• Introduction of strong verbs and their conjugation in the present tense
• Expression of quantities like litres, grams and kilos
• Roleplay: At the supermarket
• Introduction of imperative. This is used when asking people to do things
• or making a suggestion, such as 'Let's go to the Hofbrauhaus' or 'Please close the door.'
• Conversations based around the daily routine:
• Shopping, going to the market, eating and drinking
• Vocabulary: Holidays and leisure activities
• Introduction of modal verbs: can, must, should, ...
• Conjugation of modal verbs in the present tense
• Sentence structure of sentences with two verbs
• Making appointments for going out together:
• Discussing time and options.

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Level 3

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 4-5)

Content of Classes:

• Introduction of separable verbs: 'aufstehen'~ 'ich stehe auf'= I get up
• sking for and stating time in colloquial way and 24-hour-time
• Vocabulary: Describing the rooms and furnishings of your house
• Introducing definite and indefinite pronouns. For example:
• Wie findest du die Stühle? Die sind bequem.
• 'How do you like the chairs? They are comfy.'
• Hast du ein Bier? Nein, ich habe keins
• 'Do you have a beer? No, I don't have one'
• House hunting in Frankfurt and surrounds - reading advertisements in the Wohnungsmarkt
• Germany versus Australia: What are the differences in the housing market
• Describing your dream house
• Comprehension: Reading a set of simplified tenancy regulations
• Introduction of dative articles
• Use of prepositions in, an, auf with dative: in the garden = im Garten (in dem Garten)
• Vocabulary: Travel, holidays , furniture, houses and housing market
• Reading: "Insel Hiddensee" a German holiday retreat

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Level 4

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 6-7)

Content of Classes:

• Parts of the body
• Health and illnesses
• Role play: At the doctor's surgery
• Making an appointment at the doctor
• Listening: Native speakers describe their health problems. Discuss in pairs, then report back to the class
• Revision of the imperative.
• Giving advice to others, modal verbs "sollen" and "wollen"
• Reading: The sorrow corner - Dr Brown gives advice
• Introduction of the colloquial past tense = present perfect tense
• The perfect tense of irregular verbs, separable/ inseparable verbs and verbs ending on '-ieren' : fotografieren
• Putting perfect tense into practice by asking each other questions:
• How was your weekend?
• What did you do over the holidays?
• How was your trip to Switzerland?
• Vocabular: Winter holidays, skiing

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Level 5

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 7-8)

Content of Classes:

• Practice of the past tense on different topics:
• Monday morning in the office: 'How was your weekend?'
• Gossiping 'have you heard this?'
• Round the house and household: a working day at home
• Boy forgotten at service station: how could that happen?
• Trouble with moving house: things that went wrong
• Listening: Two friends didn't see each other for several years. What happened in the mean time?
• Simple past tense (preterite) of 'haben' und 'sein' = "had" (to have) and "was" (to be)
• Introducing demonstrative and personal pronouns in the accusative
• Use of prepositions "in, an auf" with the accusative case: into the garden = "in den Garten" to describe movemente
• First understanding of "Wechselprepositionen" = two-way-prepositions, which would take either dative or accusative depending on whether they describe position or movement
• Reading literature such as recipes, newspaper articles, personal letters
• Vocabulary: shops and shopping, directions, travelling etc.
• Reading maps and understanding directions

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Level 6

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1, chapters 8-9)

Content of Classes:

• Introduction of more two-way-prepositions , such as neben (near) zwischen (between) to describe movement or position
• Sightseeing in Berlin: "Listen to a tour guide in a Berlin sightseeing bus"
• Traveling around greater Berlin
• Reading: "Berlin 30 Jahre spater" - A Swiss Journalist reports.
• Vocabulary: Giving presents and gift ideas
• Introduction of dative for 'indirect object'
• Introduction of dative verbs
• Verbs that can have two objects: The father buys the child a bike
• Sentence structure with two objects
• Introducing dative pronouns. For example, 'to me'= mir, 'to us' = uns
• Telling the date and writing invitations
• Introduction of comparison (more than/ most)
• Discuss 'What do you consider important?', using the phrases 'more important than' and 'most important'
• Free conversation using comparative and superlative
• Irregular forms of the comparative
• Interview with a bakery / café owner in Hamburg
• Auf der Fotomesse": On the High-Tech-Fair introducing the
• Video Phase"

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Lower Intermediate 1

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 1 chapter 10, Themen Aktuell 2 chapter 1)

Content of Classes:

• Images of Germany (tourism, famous people, fairy tales etc)
• Discussion: People's perceptions of Germany around the globe
• Quiz: 'Who is who?' describe the live of famous people
• Study of the German-speaking regions: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein
• The different forms of the question word "welch- ?"
• Introduction of the genitive case, which is used when speaking about possession / belonging. For example, in einem Teil der Schweiz = 'in a part of Switzerland' (in a part which belongs to Switzerland)
• Reading: A tourist brochure about der Bodensee (Lake Constance)
• Listening: A native speaker telling about his holidays at Lake Constance
• Understand some features of German dialects
• Revision of all dative and accusative prepositions
• Revision of the grammar learnt so far

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Lower Intermediate 2

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 2, chapters 1-2)

Content of Classes:

• Vocabulary: Describing people, clothes and accessories
• Revision: Comparing people (who is taller, who is the youngest etc)
• Reading: An article about someone's 'makeover' - discussion of what the person looked like before and after
• Learn to change the adjective endings according to whether the case is nominative, accusative or dative
• Reading: Complete a psychological quiz, as found in magazines
• Discussion: The issue of 'tolerance' in Germany
• Learn to distinguish different types of conjunctions
• Introduction of the subordinate conjunctions "weil" = because,
• wenn" = if and "obwohl" = though
• The sentence structure of subordinate clauses versus main clauses
• Preterite of modal verbs
• How to express being content or not with one's profession and giving reasons for it

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Intermediate

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 2, chapters 2-4)

Content of Classes:

• Vocabulary: Schooling systems, job search
• The schooling system in Germany
• Talk about your own schooling experience
• Reading: Graduates from University today - without future?
• Writing a CV
• How to reply to a job advertisement
• Reading: Job advertisements
• The job interview: positives and negatives
• Vocabulary: Media, TV, Film
• Introduction of reflexive verbs
• phrasal verbs and resulting "wo-" and "da-compounds"
• Introduction of some subjunctive forms, especially of "haben" and "sein"
• Introduction of the conditional with "würde" (to avoid subjunctive)
• Subjunctive in songs to express unreal situations and wishful thinking
• Giving advice in the subjunctive: If I were you, I would ...
• Reading: Street artists
• Roleplay: Discuss your attitude towards street artists
• Vocabulary: Dealing with car trouble; service stations and the mechanic's workshop
• Revision of the comparative: After reading an excerpt from a car magazine, decide which car is best value for money
• Role play:
• Have an argument with a mechanic who has not done a good job on your car
• Introduction of the passive tense. For example, 'The car was washed', as opposed to the active 'I washed the car'
• Reading: The process of manufacturing a car
• Reading: Professions that are to do with cars
• Reading: shift work
• Role play: Conducting an interview about work situation and working hours

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Upper Intermediate

Learn German (Lessons from Themen Aktuell 2, chapters 5-7)

Content of Classes:

• Vocabulary: Family life - relationships, children, grandchildren, marriage
• Introduction of infinitive with "zu"
• Reading: Descriptions of family routines (and disputes) in various households
• Discussion: What do you like/ dislike about people?
• Discussion: Career vs children? Are people having children later in life nowadays?
• Family history - revision of the tenses required when referring to the past (ie My parents were married in 1975) or present tense (I have 3 brothers)
• Reading: "Funf Generationen auf dem Sofa"
• Revision of strong verbs (irregular verbs)
• Introduction of the Preterite (=simple past) of weak and strong verbs
• (this past tense is mainly used for written texts i.e. newspapers, magazines, stories, novels)
• The subordinate clause with "dass"
• Ich habe gehort, dass Burglind geheiratet hat.
• Vocabulary: The environment; seasons, weather, landscapes and countryside
• Reading: The weather forecast
• Introduction of the relative pronouns and the sentence structure of relative clauses
• Discussion: The problem of efficient waste disposal
• Reading: Geographical description of Germany - the mountainous, flat, and coastal regions
• Vocabulary: Travelling, working overseas
• Sentences of purpose: the subordinate conjunction "damit"
• versus sentence construction with "um ... zu"
• Indirect questions
• Reading: once working overseas - a good experience
• Reading: good career live - bad family life
• Discussion: why would people emigrate

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

German Language Course - Advanced

German Advanced

Content of Classes:

We will aim to finish the contents of our text book Themen Aktuell 2. But at these levels, teachers are free to bring in their own materials to stimulate conversation in class. Each teacher will have their own creative ideas, however here is a sample of what a typical class might include:

• Role Plays
• This is a common technique used by teachers to place topics in a realistic setting. For example: Students might study vocabulary related to renting a house. Following this, the teacher would give each person a role (such as real estate agent, landlord, share-house tenants) and ask them to enact a hypothetical situation.
• Literature
• A short story or poem is read by the class. Themes, characters and related issues are discussed in pairs and then shared with the other students.
• News and current affairs
• Students watch parts of the news in German. The class is then split into pairs, and each student prepares a set of questions to ask their partner.
• Conversations are initiated centering on economic, political and social situations around the globe.
• Debates
• The class is split into those 'for' and 'against' and given 10 minutes to prepare an argument. The topic may either be serious and controversial, or comical.
• Slides
• The teacher brings in slides or photographs and describes them to the class. Students may also bring in their own materials and give a presentation.
• Cultural themes
• Traditions such as Valentine's Day, Christmas, and other festival celebrations are discussed and explored.
• Brief revision of grammar topics as requested by students

See timetable for courses at:

Kew, Fitzroy, Malvern, Melbourne City

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