Rules/Warnings:

1. If you get someone who is proficient in German to proofread your essay, we will consider this cheating. We recognize that you can learn from having someone look over your essay for you, but we have to enforce this rule in order to make the grading fair for everyone. It IS OK for you to ask such a person (or an instructor in the German Lab) 3 or 4 specific questions on how to say something.

2. If you use an online translator for significant parts of your essay, we will consider this cheating. Note that online translators tend to produce noticeably absurd translations. Consequently, even if your instructor is not sure you are using an online translator, you are likely to get a bad grade for your essay if you use one. You also risk becoming a laughing stock in our department, like the student (this really happened!) who submitted an essay on "Ludwig Dienstwagen Beethoven" ["Dienstwagen" is a possible translation of "van," though it generallly means "company car"...].

3. Please give a word count for your essays (in Microsoft Word, you just need to select "Word Count" from the "Tools" menu to do this).

Aufsatz 2 (150 Wörter)

Schreiben Sie über eine berühmte [=famous] Person.  Ideen:

• Wie sieht er/sie aus? 
• Was sind seine/ihre persönlichen Eigenschaften [musikalisch, fleißig, intelligent...]? 
• Was macht er/sie? 
• Was kann/muss/will/soll/darf/möchte er/sie tun? 
• Mögen Sie ihn/sie?  Warum (nicht)?

ODER

Beschreiben [=describe] Sie Ihren Traumpartner! Ideen:

• Wie sieht er/sie aus? 
• Was sind seine/ihre persönlichen Eigenschaften [musikalisch, fleißig, intelligent...]? 
• Was macht er/sie? 
• Was kann/muss/will/soll/darf/möchte er/sie tun? 

Essay Writing Advice

Please don't write out an essay in English and then try to translate it into German.  This will be an awful amount of work for you, and using a dictionary to try to do a lot of things you haven't learned just leads to lots of misunderstandings.  Doing this often causes students who have worked very hard to get bad or mediocre grades, because the result is often incomprehensible. Click here for some specific advice on how to avoid this!