I feel that a critical review of German 202 (Contemporary German Life and thought is necessary because if it was not for the unforgivable lapses of the senior lecturer this could have been an interesting, informative and enjoyable course.

Course Content

German 202 is a four credit course taught in the first half of the year. Classes are held on Mondays from 12-1. It consists (theoretically) of the study of 2 set texts "Soldaten" (Soldiers, a play by Hochhutch) and "Fahrt mit der S-Bahn" (a collection of East German short stories) an individual project (refferat as the lecturer calls it) and the study of additional cyclostyled extracts provided by the lecturer.

Assessment

In a 2 hour exam students are expected to answer 3 questions. There is a compulsory question dealing with either a set text or the extracts. The mark for the refferat replaces the mark for 1 question on the final paper if it is higher than marks scored during the exam. Under this system the research project might not count at all despite the fact that most students spend a great deal of time on it - I feel that in-term assessment should have been worth about 40% and the exam 60%. Students were never informed about the mark they received for the research project and therefore had no idea of how well they needed to during the exam. At the end of the course the lecturer put up a list of grades on Monday July 5th then took it down as he was not satisfied with his marking system. The amended list appeared on Thursday July 8th.

Work Covered in Class

The inadequacy of this timetable is clearly illustrated when one considers that the average length of a refferat was 45 minutes (this does not include question time, handing out pamphlets, putting up diagrams etc.) 17 students obviously needed 1 hour (and were told at the beginning of the course that they would be given 1 hour) each to deliver their refferat. The total course time was 26 hours (13 weeks of a 2 hour class per week) leaving only 9 hours for the study of a difficult play, short stories and extracts - clearly a ludicrous situation. Eight double classes and I ordinary class should have been allocated for the refferata. The first refferat should have been given on 15-3-76 (not 12-4-76) and the last on 24-5-76 each double class being devoted solely to refferatta. The cramming of 4 refferatta into 2 hours forced students to rush through their material, discouraged questions (the lecturer managed to find time for a 15 minute monologue at the end of each talk), and some students were cut off in mid - sentence with "excuse me - would you finish now please."

Extracts

Apart from the first 2 which were completely unrelated to the preceeding work, all extracts were in German. The lecturer first read these then translated (extremely well I must admit) and asked for comments.

Needless to say only a superficial understanding of Nietzsche was gained and the representativeness of the extracts studied is open to serious doubt. (The lecturer admitted he had great difficulty selecting the extracts). 4 extracts dealing with the horrors of Nazi Germany and the speeches of the Kaiser were handed out but not dealt with due to lack of time. There were no references indicating what books the extracts came from and the lecturer did not provide background information or suggest books which would provide this information.

Set Texts