Activities in Ann Arbor--for details, ask Hartmut to put you on the "allstudents" list, through which you receive a weekly email about dates and times.  Attendance at the following events can generally be used to make up absences in German 101-232, if you get the instructor there to notify your intructor that you participated.

• Kaffeestunde und Filme im Max Kade Haus
• Deutschtische In South Quad und Bursley
• "Essen mit..." Generally, one or more instructors in the department will announce a time once a week when they will eat in town.  German students at all levels are welcome to attend.
• Deutschtische in der Residential College in East Quad.  These generally take place MTThF 12-1 in a room on the ground floor; ask at the front desk.  Bring lunch, or get it in the EQ cafeteria.

Watching (Subtitled) Movies

• Watching subtitled movies is great listening practice. Don't feel bad about reading the subtitles! The key is for you to consciously correlate what you're hearing in the subtitles with what you're hearing. Focus on what you can understand, and on moments when you're understanding more than the subtitles are telling you. If you're just reading the subtitles and not paying attention to what you're hearing, then your listening skills won't benefit much.
• If you have time, you should watch each movie twice: once with the subtitles on, and once with the subtitles covered up. Your listening skills will benefit greatly from the second viewing, when you'll have a good idea of what's being said and can really focus on what you're hearing.
• Click here for a list of videos on CTools and at the Language Resource Center.
• You can also find an excellent selection of movies at the Askwith Media Library in the UGLi. You can check films out from Askwith and take them home.
• Netflix also has a great selection of German films. Hollywood Video and Blockbuster will have the more internationally successful titles. In town, Liberty Video (663-3121; located on the corner of Liberty and Fourth Streets) has a good selection of German films.

Mehr Ideen

• Live at the Max Kade German Residence
• Watch Deutsche Welle TV in the Language Resource Center or on UMTV.
• Try the listening activities on Tell Me More: German, which is available in the LRC (choose level 1, 2 or 3). You could also try buying this or some other commercial language learning software or CDs at Borders or online. For any such materials, you will find online reviews from people who loved them and others who found them useless, but they do all emphasize listening.
• Find some American friends who are into speaking German. Or some old German Americans.  Or some German tourists....

Am Computer

• Here is a list of links to live German radio and TV on the web
• Visit some German music sites and look for audio samples
• Watch the trailers on some German movie homepages
• Visit some sports sites.  These often include video or audio clips.
• Try some computer learning software.  Again, it may not live up to the claims on the box, but will surely be a good supplement to what you're learning in class. Be sure to choose a program which offers lots of audio and video.  For an annotated list of the exponentially increasing and improving selection of computer assisted language learning software, click here.
• Visit some dialect sites for fun.  Note that even native speakers of German won't understand some of these dialects, so don't get discouraged :)

Specific Sites

• CLIP2GO Great site where you can learn by watching videos, listening to audio clips (available as podcasts), reading texts, looking at pictures or by creating your own wordlists, and in each case see an accompanying complete vocabulary list with translations that become visible when you roll the mouse over each word.
  • To build listening skills in conjunction with a video or audio clip, you can first have the program play all the individual words for you while rolling over them to see the meanings, then play the clip; if you have more time, play the clip first, then the list of words, then play the clip again.
  • There is not yet [8/2007] audio for every word, but anything with a "play"-icon next to it has been recorded and you can listen to it by clicking on the icon, or select "play all" to hear all the available audio for individual words associated with a given text.
  • To get started, click on "Learn German" at the top (as opposed to "Learn English" or "Learn Spanish") and then select the media you want to work with.
  • You can log in for free to access even more features. the "About Clip2Go" link for information on how to navigate the site.
  • The media available on the site are created by users, so the site is always growing.
• Deutsche Welle: Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten [Click on the link, then scroll down to "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten and click on today's date. Then you'll see the text, and at the bottom of the page, the link to the audio file.] Here you can listen to German news spoken slowly and clearly, and simultaneously follow along in the text. Also check out the many other audio offerings on the Deutsche Welle site!
• Germans and Americans Talk Excellent site where you can hear and read interviews with Germans and Americans on a variety of cultural topics. In many cases, you can hear the audio and see a transcript of what the person is saying in German, as well as an English translation. Topics range from "Public Nudity" to "Public Transportation: Germany Has a System, Arlington, Texas Has None."
• BBC: DeutschPlus 10 episodes focused on aspects of everyday language (shopping, phoning, traveling, telling time etc.) to watch or listen to; transcripts are available.
• Let's speak German! (A daily bit) Martina Schubert in Berlin has created this blog in which she speaks a variety of short texts very clearly, while you can follow the transcript in the blog. A few items include links to videos/photo collages.
• Lebendiges Museum Online Archive Here you can choose from a wide range of historical audio and video files (to see the video tab, scroll all the way to the right) as well as all kinds of other statistics, maps etc.
• About.com's German Language Lab Lots of listening practice ranging from the alphabet to tongue twisters.
• Vorleser.net Marvellous site where you can download free mp3 files of various (mostly literary) texts being read aloud in very clear German. Clicking on the audio icon gives you just an excerpt of the text ==> click on the disk icon to download the entire text. You can also click on the document icon to see the written version of the text in a separate browser window. To find a specific text, click on "Autoren." A good starting point might be the Grimm fairy tales, which you can get to via the site's home page.
• Deutsche Welle Audio on Demand and Deutsche Welle Video on Demand Lots to choose from, including music, news, science (Projekt Zukunft), a 5-minute sports show etc.
• Lyrikline A poetry site.  Click on "Autoren" for a selection of authors, for many of whom you can then hear a recording of the poet herself/himself reading the poem!
• Deutsch 328 an der Creighton University: Studies in Contemporary German Culture--The Last 25 Years. Professor Böhlke has compiled a great collection of online audio and video files as part of this course, which you can access by clicking on the links in this online syllabus. Those labeled "PW" are password-protected, but all others are freely accessible.