Starter  Schreib diese Wörter in alphabetischer Reihenfolge auf: Berlin, groß, bringen, gehen, Buch, Biologie, alt, essen, Eis, Meerschweinchen, machen.  Write “V” next to the verbs  Write “N” next to the nouns  Write “A” next to the adjectives

Antwort:  alt (A)  Berlin (N)  Biologie (N)  bringen (V)  Buch (N)  Eis (N)  essen (V)  gehen (V)  groß (A)  machen (V)  Meerschweinchen (N)

 For your GCSE assessments it is essential to be able to use a dictionary well by:-...knowing the different types of words which make up sentences (verb/ noun/ adjective)...having the skill to identify/select the correct word(s) from a dictionary....using the grammatical information in dictionaries successfully to your advantage

Nouns in a Dictionary  When you need to find the German for an English word, you fist need to decide whether you are looking for a noun, verb or adjective  Which word is the noun out of the following:  Buy  Run  Happy  Onion  Fat ? Remember, a noun is the name of something!

What’s in a name?  Lets look up “onion” to see what it is in German.  You should find something like this:  Onion [‘ ʌ n yən] n Zwiebel f

Onion [‘ ʌ n yən] n Zwiebel f  Onion – the words in bold are the words you want to translate  [‘ ʌ n yən] this tells you how to pronounce the word in bold type.  n – this is telling you that the word which follows is a noun.  Zwiebel – this is the German noun which means “onion”  f – This tells you that “Zwiebel” is a feminine noun.

Onion [‘ ʌ n yən] n Zwiebel f  How do you say in German:  An onion  The onion  A shirt  The shirt  A head  The head

But I want two!  If you want to find the correct way to write the plural of a German noun, you first need to be able to find it in the GERMAN side of the dictionay  Look up “Zwiebel”

Zwiebel [‘tsvi:bəl] (-,-n) f onion  We know what Zwiebel is.  We know what [‘tsvi:bəl] is  (-,-n)?  The brackets are basically saying “I contain your instructions for forming a plural”  -, -n : the fist dash represents the vowels in the word and shows that they don’t change  The second dash followed by an “n” represents the changes we make to the end of the word.  So onions =  Zwiebeln  What might ( -¨,-n) mean?  Or ( -¨,- )?

Find the German for:  Dogs  Cats  Girls  Mothers  Brothers

adj vi vt  Find the following  To play  A play  To fly  A fly  Happy  Sad  What does “adj” indicate  What do “vt” and “vi” indicate

The essentials 1.Use your common sense – if a word ‘feels’ wrong, it possibly is. If in doubt, look the word up in the opposite section of the dictionary. 2.Read carefully the information from the dictionary about the type of word it is. (Particularly important if you are looking up a word which could be used in two ways). 3.If a word has two or more unrelated meanings (e.g. Bat), the dictionary will generally have two separate entries for it. 4.Always read the examples given under the entry – you may find something useful. 5.If in doubt about plurals, the German/French/Spanish – English section of the dictionary (front section generally) will give this information so find your word there. 6.Remember that most of the time, you will not be able to use the F/G/S verb as it is in the dictionary – it will need conjugating

BAD DICTIONARY SKILLS (A GERMAN EXAMPLE) Fred wanted to write in his coursework, “Overall, it was a good film”. He found the word “Arbeitshose” (which means ‘overalls’ – clothes to wear for work). This could’ve been avoided by:- -Fred looking at the word carefully realising that Arbeit means “work” and Hose meaning “trousers” – or suspecting that it might mean “overall” and double checking in the other section of the dictionary - he could’ve looked for a second time and realised that he was looking at “overalls” not “overall”. - he should have realised that he wanted an adverb for his sentence not a noun.

Use your dictionary to find the word for:  to help  help (support)  match (to light a fire)  match (football/tennis)  bat (cricket/rounders)  to fly  to book (holiday)