Even in 101, we recommend that you try some of the wide range of ideas given in the general description of the LLJ online and in the Coursepack. Just use as much German as you can, and fill in the rest with English. Nevertheless, we've listed some alternative ideas here in case you think this advice is crazy. If you try one and don't find it to be worthwhile, please try something else!!
Once you know a bit more German, perhaps for your third or fourth LLJ, you could read the recommended text available at the bookstores for your LLJs: 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
Watch the six 15 minute DVDs from the BBC's Talk German video series which are on reserve in the LRC, and fill out the accompanying worksheets, which you can download from CTools. You can watch one disk per LLJ. This series is intended to be an introduction to the basics of German language and culture, and focuses on Bayern (Bavaria) and specifically München (Munich). Since the series is really rather basic, it would make sense for you to do this early in the semester, i.e. for your first six LLJs rather than the last six. You will hear a fair amount of authentic German, with an emphasis on some basic expressions needed for everyday interactions (no grammar instruction), and get some interesting cultural information.
Follow up on the culture readings assigned for homework by finding some additional information on your own, and write about what you found. Your LLJ 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.
Watch subtitled movies from 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 at You can then write a brief journal 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.
Find an English book about German culture, politics or history, read it for 45-50 minutes, then write in English 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 (currently available from but NOT from amazon.com, which only sells an older (1994) edition. The library also only has this 1994 edition)
A travel guide to Germany
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)
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)
