LLJ Ideen

Here are some ideas to use as a starting point...but quickly you will find something that is totally unique to you and lets you explore German in a way combined with your particular interests. In the post, just use as much German as you can, and fill in the rest with English.  Here are some ideas...if you try one and don't find it to be worthwhile, please try something else!! You should find something for you, whether you are interested in German cars, history, current politics, literature, music, or film! As you scroll through the list you should start to get the idea that the possibilities are endless.... :)

1. Borrow ideas from other students: With the blog, look around to see what other students are doing! Maybe something will inspire you! You can also look at other sections (link on bottom right sidebar to other sections' blogs). 
2. Find an Email/Chat conversation partner: You won't have a hard time finding someone who would love a change to practice English, and you can work out a system of writing half German/half English. Here is a link to help you find a native German speaker. 
3. Attend a Kaffeestunde or Deutschtisch: Speak German with other Umich students and Max Kade house residents. Write about who was there, what you talked about. 
4. Do anything you like to do, but do it in German: Go out to lunch with a friend who speaks German, go longboarding, go jogging, whatever you like, and speak German while doing it! Maybe see if anyone in class has similar hobbies, or someone in another section, and make this a regular thing! 
5. Watch German TV:  For example, South Park has all episodes in German! And through the ARD website, Tatort (a famous and beloved German Krimi show), or soap operas: Verbotene Liebe (forbidden love). More "Unterhaltungsserien" under this link (including quiz shows, cooking shows, etc). German "late night" talk show: Harald Schmidt.   
6. Listen to German music, learn to sing along:  Check out the site stepintogerman.org and click on "Music Videos". Often these videos have links to the lyrics at the bottom of the page. Scroll through various artists on the right. After listening to a song you like, bring up the lyrics and try singing along (this is great speaking practice!!). If you are feeling especially brave, lip synch with a friend and post the video on your post :) Or if you are a talented singer, record your own version!
   Or check out the German mtv.de and look through the music videos or charts. Listen to a few of the German-language songs you can find, and post a link to the coolest one on your blog post. Look up the lyrics if you're interested and see if you can understand anything. The MTV site uses lots of English so it's easy to navigate! comment on your reactions to the differences in German/English charts. Here are even more music links if you are interested in classical music, German rap, alternative pop, or other German bands, Swiss country music, how to find lyrics...Post a music video on your post and let other students know what good stuff you found.
7. German Art: Check out the UMMA's collection of German art, such as Emil Nolde's Frisian landscape and Max Beckmann's Begin the Beguine, and post images to some of your favorite artists. Look them up online after and learn a bit more about them. You can visit the University Art museum for free! Walk though next time you're walking through campus. More art and architecture links here.
8. Cook or Bake something German: Or just read recipes and plan an elaborate menu for an imaginary (or real!) party! Here is a great site for looking for recipes: Chefkoch.de. They also have fun guides such as "Tipps fürs Grillen" and "Biergartenfeeling für zuhause".  More food ideas here. 
9. Work on your vocab: This may not sound like fun to everyone, but some people enjoy the nitty-gritty of German grammar, or learning vocab. Take time this week to make up silly sentences using the vocab, or record yourself saying the words. this is always an option if you feel like it would also help you in class!
10. Follow German Sports: Want to know whether anyone plays baseball in Germany? Or who the biggest soccer (Fußball!) teams are? Here are links to some of the best sites for exploring topics on German sports. 
11. Read something fun: Once you know a bit more German, perhaps for your third or fourth blog post, you could read the recommended text available at the bookstores: Prinzessin Horst. It's a short, fun book about what happens in an imaginary kingdom when a princess is born, but the king, who had absolutely counted on his wife giving birth to a boy, decides to go ahead and give her a boy's name anyway and names her "Horst." The book is a cute parody of a tabloid format, and the kingdom is quite modern; this is one of those children's books that adults immediately love. The German is very simple, and you should be able to figure it out with the help of a dictionary and the pictures in the book.
12. Watch a movie: Watch a movie in German, and then post the trailer on the blog! You can often find the trailer by googling the German title plus "Trailer" (it's the same word!), or look on imbd.de. Please use a German trailer if available! You could also write some brief comments about what you saw in English, emphasizing interesting things you noticed about German culture as you watched the movie, as well as your general reactions to the film.Give the film a star rating so other students can decide whether they might enjoy it as well!
    Find subtitled movies in the "Filme" folder on our CTools site, or from the List of Videos on Reserve at the Language Resource Center, which you can find online here. Many German films are also available at Askwith Media Library (Shapiro). How to search for a film.Netflix also has quite a few German language films streaming if you subscribe.
    
13. Explore a Cultural Topic: Follow up on the culture readings assigned for homework by finding some additional information on your own, and write about what you found.  Your post can also include some of your reactions to what you read, but it should not just be a summary of what you read and your reactions (the grade for that would be a "check minus"): it should also include some additional information you found.
    
14. Learn more about German culture, politics, history: Find an English book about German culture, politics or history, read it for 45-50 minutes, then write in English (use German when you can!) about what you read for 10-15 minutes.  Here are a few possibilities just to get you going (these are not necessarily all good books--see what you think before you commit to one of them!):

·         Richard Lord: Culture Shock!  Germany (available from amazon.com)

·         Jennifer Phillips & Christopher Warnasch: In the Know in Germany: The Indispensable Cross-Cultural Guide to Working and Living in Germany (available from amazon.com)

·         Susan Stern: These Strange German Ways and the Whys of the Ways (available through sellers on amazon.com, look for 2000 and not 1994 edition.  The library only has the1994 edition)

·         A travel guide to Germany (Lonely Plannet, Frommers, etc)

·         Ronald Taylor: Berlin And Its Culture : A Historical Portrait (UGLi DD 866.8 .T391 1997)

·         Evans, Richard J.: The Coming Of The Third Reich (UGLi DD 237 .E915 2004)

·         J.K.A. Thomaneck and Bill Niven: Dividing and Uniting Germany (UGLi DD 257.25 .T46 2001)

·         Fritz Stern: Einstein’s German World (UGLi DD 239 .S741 1999)

·         Christopher R. Browning: Ordinary men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland (UGLi Reserve Desk D 804.3 .B771 1992)

·         Mary Fulbrook: A Concise History of Germany (UGLi DD 89 .F7941 1990)

·         Martin Kitchen: The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany (Grad Lib DD 89 .K551 1996)

·         Hagen Schulze: Germany: A New History (UGLi DD 89 .S39613 1998

·         Eva Kolinsky & Wilfried van der Will (eds.): The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (Grad Lib DD 204 .C361 1998)

·         A biography of a famous German who interests you--or a translated book by him/her

·         Lotte Eisner: The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt (Grad Lib 808.29 E37ec tG79)

·         Siegfried Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History Of The German Film (UGLi PN1993.5.G3 K88 1947)

·        Sabine Hake: German National Cinema (Grad Lib 808.29 H155ge)

7. Explore German Literature: Find an English translation (or, better yet, a Dual Language edition!) of a novel or a short story by a German author who interests you, read it for 45-50 minutes, then write in English about what you read for 10-15 minutes. You can find translated German literature in the UGLi in the "PT" call numbers, and translated and untranslated German literature in the Grad Library in the 838 call numbers on floor 3 South.  Here are a few possibilities just to get you going.  

·         Any collection of stories by Franz Kafka.  The Metamorphosis (sometimes included with the stories, sometimes published separately as a novella) will get your attention right away.  If you get hooked, you may want to try one of his three famous unfinished novels (The Trial, The Castle, America)

·         Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther (no one title by Goethe is representative of his work, especially not this early "bestseller," but this is perhaps his most accessible book).  Part I of Faust is also readable and thought-provoking.

·         Hermann Hesse: Demian, Siddartha or Steppenwolf (all great books for college age readers; very popular in the 60s and 70s)

·         Christa Wolf: Cassandra (an alternative perspective on the Trojan War)

·         Bertolt Brecht: The Good Woman of Sezuan, Mother Courage or Galileo

·         Thomas Mann: Death in Venice, or, if you're ambitious, The Magic Mountain (people who love to read often list this as one of their favorite novels)

·         Ingeborg Bachmann: "The Thirtieth Year" (interesting short story/novella about getting older)

·         Friedrich Dürrenmatt: The Visit or The Physicists (dark comedies)

·         Max Frisch: Andorra, The Fire Raisers (both famous plays) or Homo Faber (made into a movie starring Sam Shepard)

·         Jurek Becker: Jacob the Liar (novel about the Holocaust; made into a movie starring Robin Williams--the award-winning East German film based on this novel is perhaps better, and is available at Liberty Video)

·         Heinrich Böll: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (this novel will make you think twice about reading another tabloid paper)

·         Any collection of Wolfgang Borchert's simple, sad stories about World War II

·         Günter Grass: Cat and Mouse, or, if you're feeling ambitious, his famous novel about a little boy with a toy drum in Danzig in the years before and during World War II, who willfully stops growing at age 3: The Tin Drum

·         Bernhard Schlink: The Reader (bestselling novel which begins with a 15 year old boy's affair with an enigmatic older woman.  When he finds her again years later, she is being tried as a Nazi criminal.)

·         Peter Handke: Offending the Audience, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams or A Moment of True Feeling (experimental works by a somewhat controversial contemporary author.  The first is a sort of meta-play, the second a matter-of-fact and yet very moving meditation on his mother's suicide, the third an amusingly idiosyncratic novel of alienation)

·         Any of E.T.A. Hoffmann's somewhat dreamy, sometimes magical, sometimes dark novellas

·         Any of Heinrich von Kleist's breathless historical novellas, such as Michael Kohlhaas (Coalhouse Walker in Doctorow's Ragtime is based on Michael Kohlhaas) or The Earthquake in Chile

·         A translation of the Nibelungenlied (on which Wagner's opera cycle is based)

·         Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet or The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge

·         Friedrich von Schiller's William Tell (in which Tell shoots the apple on his son's head)