Cultural curriculum

With Auf geht’s! we want our students to see themselves as growing bilingual members of the global community. To achieve this, we strongly emphasize cultural content and developing intercultural communicative competence, because language skills are not enough to develop both translingual and transcultural competence.

How do we teach culture?

Learner focused interactions

The interactive software presents the bulk of the vocabulary, cultural learning and especially listening activities outside of class, preparing students for writing and classroom activities.

More about our interactions ...

Integrated multiple media

Different learning media have strengths and weaknesses. we strive to use multimedia, print, and classroom-based tasks in creative ways though out our curriculum. This allows the strengths of each medium to be emphasized, enhancing student learning.

Why not a textbook by itself?

Authentic materials

All materials, as an authentic form of content-based education, are about real people and seek to reinforce the broad cultural understanding necessary to engage with people from German-speaking countries.

Are they worth it?

Model-based writing

The Auf geht’s! Lernbuch has a robust, model-based writing program far beyond anything in traditional textbooks.

How does model-based writing work?

Cultural curriculum

When communicating with people from different backgrounds, cultural skills are just as important as language skills. Ritmos sets cultural learning on equal footing with language learning, since language and culture are inextricably bound and both are key to future success in life. All materials, as an authentic form of content-based education, are about real people and seek to reinforce the broad cultural understanding necessary to engage with people from Spanish-speaking countries.

Learner focused interactions

Our online learning platform utilizes many interaction types to activate multiple learning channels for students. The book activities also utilize dozens of different activities, focusing on creating meaningful, real communication between students in class as well as encouraging students to think and express themselves interculturally through reading and writing.

Integrated multiple media

The Lernbuch used in both Auf geht’s! and Weiter geht’s! does not attempt to do everything as a traditional textbook does. Rather, they are designed to handle the tasks that are best done in print and leave to the online learning platform the learning functions that work best in software. So our Lernbuch combines the best elements of a textbook and a workbook into one medium.

Authentic materials

Our reading and listening texts are drawn from a corpus of hundreds of interviews with German speakers, oriented around topics appropriate for novice and intermediate learners. This unscripted, natural language provides students with excellent training in listening and reading comprehension, preparing students for actual encounters in the target language and also providing models for students’ own language production. Careful selection of interview questions and responses, along with varied pedagogical interventions make this authentic language accessible and ‘doable’ for beginning and intermediate learners.

Model-based writing

The Auf geht’s! Lernbuch has a robust, model-based writing program far beyond anything in traditional textbooks. Normally, student writing at the novice level is very limited, and attempts to write beyond their level result either in incomprehensible German or, when students give up, computer-translated text. By providing thorough scaffolding through writing models, students can “bootstrap” their writing and produce meaningful written discourse that is level appropriate and develops their awareness of how German works in a successful manner.