BLL German/Contributing

Thank you for volunteering to contribute something to this Wikibook!

In order to ensure that your contribution will be helpful to the students and much appreciated by other contributors, please read the following notes carefully. They will also serve as suggestions for those who would like to contribute but don't know what and as a TO-DO list for contributors.

After each task you will find who could complete this task / contribute in this way.

Contributing a lesson (advanced student or native speaker)

• If you are at at least intermediate level in German, you can write a lesson based on an available outline, e. g. the one for level A1 lesson 5. Please use level A1 lesson 1 as a guide to the appearance and structure of the lesson.
• If you would like to contribute a lesson for which no outline exists yet, please make sure you understand the basic idea behind the course first. Then think about which level the lesson belongs to (consult the page describing what students will be able to do after completing each level). Afterwards, see whether the lesson you propose can follow right after the last existing lesson for that level, that is, whether it won't require more than 10-15 new words or more knowledge of grammar than would normally be taught in one lesson. If it fits, go ahead and add the lesson (note that for level A1 lessons 1-4 plus the one on pronunciation are already available at an external website and need only be converted). If it is too advanced for now, please add it to the page BLL German/For future use instead, so that it can be adapted and inserted once the time is right.

Contributing a text (native speaker)

If you have an idea for a useful and natural-sounding German text that could be used in one of the lessons, please add it to BLL German/For future use. If you know of a way to make an existing lesson text longer without exceeding the vocabulary / grammar limit, feel free to edit the lesson right away. Longer lesson texts are more helpful to learners in that they provide more models to follow.

Contributing vocabulary (anybody)

Additional vocabulary for the main part of a lesson is only welcome if it allows for a significant increase of the text length and still stays within the limit of 10-15 new words per lesson. However, there is no limit to the lists of optional vocabulary, because students will choose which words to learn from those. Feel free to add any useful words that fit the topic there. If the topic for which you have new words hasn't been introduced yet, add the list to BLL German/For future use or the vocabulary section on the main page.

Contributing grammar (student or native speaker or linguist)

Part of the idea of the Bite-sized language lessons is to introduce grammar in tiny steps, so that the student can decide for himself when to progress to the next item. Hence, please don't add to the grammar section of an existing lesson unless you think you can explain something better. If you know a good explanation of a topic of grammar that has not yet been covered, please add it to BLL German/For future use so that it will be included in the lesson where that aspect of grammar is covered.

Contributing exercises (student or native speaker)

Exercises are very important because they allow the student to see whether he really understood the expressions and grammar introduced in a lesson. Also, there is no such thing as too many exercises - challenged students will be grateful for every exercise they can find and talented students will just skip the rest of the exercises once they are sure they understand what was taught. Hence, feel free to add any amount of exercises to any lesson, so long as they correspond to what was taught and don't require additional knowledge. If you have written an exercise for something that wasn't taught yet, put it in BLL German/For future use and it will be included in a future lesson.

Contributing cultural information (anybody)

Every lesson should not just teach the language but also give the student some knowledge of the culture / customs / history / politics / everyday life / etc. of German-speaking countries. Go ahead and add some, just make sure it doesn't cover more space than the list of vocabulary or the grammar section. If there is more to say, link to a more detailed article e. g. on Wikipedia. As with the other contributions, if you believe that something would fit better in a future lesson, put it in BLL German/For future use.

Contributing recordings (native speaker only)

Recording are immensely important for the students because in internet courses they generally receive much less auditive input than in a regular classroom. However, they need models for their pronunciation. Recordings made by native speakers are the only way to give them that. Feel free to record any and every part of a lesson in German. The lesson text and the vocabulary are priorities, but e. g. listening comprehension / dictation exercises and anything else you can think of are very welcome, too.

Contributing your experience as a fellow student (student only)

As a student of German you have a particularly valuable thing to contribute: your experience. How did you manage to learn a particular word or its gender? How did you manage to learn a part of grammar? How would you explain it? What general tips can you give learners? This is a part of learning where native speakers are of no help at all, because they never had to study their language. Your input is very welcome, just add it at the appropriate place within the lesson or put it in BLL German/For future use.

Misc contributing (anybody)

The course also needs people to improve the formatting, convert the external lessons to Wiki format, check for spelling mistakes etc. in both English and German or create a nice cover image, logo or small image to be used inside the lesson.