Program Overview

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Centre for Continuing Education

The Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sydney offers a diverse range of professional development short courses. These courses are designed to enhance professional development, grow technical and people skills, and support career progression.

Course Subjects

The Centre offers courses in various subjects, including:

• Business and management
  • Business communication
  • Business strategy
  • Business writing
  • Cultural competence and diversity
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Organisational psychology
  • Sales and customer service
• English
• HSC preparation (years 10-12)
  • HSC biology
  • HSC business studies
  • HSC chemistry
  • HSC economics
  • HSC English
  • HSC mathematics
  • HSC physics
  • Year 11 (Revision)
  • Years 10-12 study and essay skills
• Humanities and culture
  • Creative writing
  • Music
  • Philosophy
  • Psychology
• Information technology
  • Adobe
  • AI and machine learning courses
  • Data analysis and analytics
    • Business analytics
    • GIS
    • Git
    • Power BI
    • Python
    • R programming
    • Statistics
    • SQL
    • Tableau
  • Google
  • Microsoft
    • Microsoft Excel
    • Microsoft Office
    • Microsoft Project
• Language
  • Arabic
  • Brazilian Portuguese
  • Chinese
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Spanish
• Marketing
  • Digital marketing
  • Marketing communications
  • Product development
• Project management
  • Agile methodology courses
  • Change management for projects
  • Stakeholder and people management
  • Technical project management skills

German Course 101 (Level 1): Beginners

Course Description

This course is designed for beginners who want to learn German for travel or work. The course covers greetings, introductions, alphabet, pronunciation, numbers, family and work vocabulary, and builds essential grammar, verb conjugations, and conversational skills.

Course Details

• Duration: 10 sessions, 20 hours total
• Next date: 2 February 2026
• Class mode: Online via Zoom
• Cost: A$410.00

Course Information

The course is based on Level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). It is ideal for preparing for travel or work commitments and covers the basics of the language, such as basic greetings and numbering. Grammatical elements are also introduced as students start to learn basic speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Introduce themselves personally and professionally, and ask about the names and professions of others
• Count to 1,000,000
• Spell in German
• Form simple questions and answers using interrogatives, verb conjugations, and nouns with articles
• Engage in simple conversations
• Have a simple grasp of grammatical structure

Content

The course covers:

• Greetings (welcome and farewell)
• The German alphabet
• Pronunciation of letters – in particular the Umlauts ä, ö, ü
• Introducing yourself and others
• Vocabulary for word fields such as family, work, languages, colours, country names
• Numbers from 1 – 1,000,000
• Constructing questions by using interrogatives
• Introduction to regular verb and basic irregular verb conjugations
• Articles – definite, indefinite, possessive, and negative
• Nouns – singular and plural
• Introduction to grammatical cases (declension)

Intended Audience

The course is suitable for beginner A1 level students.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Delivery Style

The course is delivered as a series of interactive sessions where active participation is encouraged. Each session is conducted in a friendly and relaxed classroom environment.

Prescribed Text

The prescribed text for this course is:

• Menschen A1 Kursbuch & Online Materials by Wortberg (Max Hueber Verlag)
• Menschen A1 Arbeitsbuch & Audio CDs by Glas-Peters et al. (Max Hueber Verlag)

Optional Text

The optional text for this course is:

• MENSCHEN A1.1 Vocabulary/Glossary by Ozorowska and Schwingshackl (Max Hueber Verlag)
• MENSCHEN A1.2 Vocabulary/Glossary by Ozorowska and Schwingshackl (Max Hueber Verlag)

Suggested Textbook Supplier

The suggested textbook supplier is Language Book Centre (languagebooks.com.au).

Organisational Training

For groups of six or more, courses can be delivered to your team with the option to tailor content.

Meet the Facilitators

Sylvia Uebelhoer

Sylvia has studied sociology, psychology, education, and philosophy in Wuppertal and at the University of Hamburg. Before becoming a language facilitator and receiving a Certificate in Language, she worked in various roles, including teaching and research.

What Others Say

Excellent course by a great, energetic teacher who kept it relevant, motivated us, and ensured we worked collaboratively as well as separately. We got to meet some lovely class mates as well.

Ruth McAfee

I loved this class. Our tutor was the best teacher I’ve ever had, and never failed to put everyone in a good mood and make them excited to learn. I now feel confident in my German and very excited to progress to the next stage. Would recommend this course to anyone wanting to start learning German, as it was the best welcome to the language I possibly could have had!

Kate Robson

Fantastic course! Starting from the very beginning with lots of class interaction! Highly recommended!

Jessica Tanner

Related Courses

German Course 102 (Level 2)

Build on your German foundations in this A1 course. Practise everyday communication for work, leisure, food, and travel, while learning noun plurals, the accusative case, and modal, irregular, and separable verbs to expand your skills.