Academics Based

The GermanPlus program was heavily academic based. Students take Academic Writing in German, and a German language class (c2). Additionally, students take three subject courses: art history, identity and politics, and theater. The classes are part of a package and cannot be changed, and they are split from 9-12, and three days a week subject courses are 4:30-7. We did not enjoy the long break in between because it would be late by the time we would get home every night and between classes there wasn’t enough time to go expplore Berlin. People in lower levels of German had the opportunity to explore more, but often did not take it. I feel we would have used the opportunity better and would have been able to practice our german with the locals. Our german definitely improved a lot, as well as pronunciation, due to all of our classes taking place in german. Our assignments were also in german and because of the support provided our by our german teachers, our written assignments (all in German) had to be top notch. Meanwhile, students in lower levels would often pull together their ten-page research papers the night before they were due since they were in English. You will need to invest much more time than for a traditional study abroad program, or than students in lower levels, but you will improve your language skills significantly. The students in our program were pretty isolated from the rest of the FU-BEST program, but we got along very well and spent most of our time together. We were able to practice german together and help each other. There were six girls officially in the GermanPlus program, meaning taking the german courses and subject courses, but there were several other students from the higher levels of german who were able to enroll in the subject courses. They didn’t receive the support we did for our assignments and often didn’t know how to complete assignments without this help. Also, this led to inconsistencies between professors’ grading because these students were sometimes grades easier and not so much on grammar, whereas we had to pay attention to grammar.