GCSE German₈₆₆₂

Students should learn the GCSE German vocabulary list (Appendix 2) and will be expected to use this vocabulary across a range of contexts and assessment tasks.

3.3.1 Composition of vocabulary content

1. Students are expected to know 1,200 lexical items for Foundation tier, and a further 500 lexical items for Higher tier. Students are also required to know words which can be regularly inflected and (for Paper 3 Reading only) regularly derived from listed lexical items using the grammar specified in section 3.3.

2. Because no vocabulary is specified for KS2 or KS3, the vocabulary list is comprehensive and makes no assumptions about vocabulary previously taught.

3. The vocabulary lists include, as part of the 1,200 or 1,700 items, the words listed in the DfE subject content Annex E. These are the words which are referenced in the grammar in section 3. They include irregular forms of high frequency verbs and other parts of speech.

4. In addition to the 1,200 and 1,700 items, the vocabulary lists contain :

   1. 30 short phrases that are multi-word phrases in German

   2. 20 items to refer to relevant geographical or cultural places/events, including the names of countries to be known receptively and productively.

5. For Reading only:

   1. Higher and overlapping tier texts in Paper 3 may include a small number of words outside the vocabulary list. English meanings of such words will be supplied adjacent to the text for reference. No more than 2% of words (rounded to the nearest whole word) in any given text may be glossed in this way.

   2. For both Foundation and Higher tiers, all proper nouns (such as cities or countries) that are not on the vocabulary list and are not deemed to be easily understood, can be glossed or explained in an adjacent note.

   3. Up to 2% of words (rounded to the nearest whole word) of any given text can be comprised of cognates which are not included in the vocabulary list. Cognates are words in which the substantial majority of letters are the same in English and the assessed language; they have the same meaning in both languages and any difference in spelling should not impede understanding for students entered for GCSE German.

6. Words with multiple meanings but with the same part of speech will be listed as one entry in the vocabulary list. All English equivalents that could be tested (eg , in questions that require working from English to German) are provided.

7. The vocabulary which students will be expected to know, for both comprehension and production, will be compiled with close and explicit reference for each item on the list to frequency of occurrence in the language. This information about frequency has been taken from Tschirner, E. & Möhring , J. (2019). A frequency dictionary of German: Core vocabulary for learners (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

8. At least 85% of the 1,200 and 1,700 words selected has been drawn from the 2,000 most frequent words occurring in the most widely used standard forms of the language. In some cases, more than one spelling is in common use, including where recent spelling reforms have taken place. In such cases, tolerance is shown for both versions of the spelling, eg der Fluß /der Fluss .

The vast majority of lexical items listed as vocabulary are single word vocabulary items. Where a compound word or multi-word phrase translates a single English word, it is counted either as a separate lexical item in the main vocabulary list, or as one of the 30 multi-word phrases. However, where a compound word or phrase can easily be understood from its components, and where the components are already included in the list, the compound word will not be included. Easily understood from its components means that the literal translation of the component parts unambiguously gives the meaning in English. An example of an easily understood compound word or phrase in German is Hunger haben . An example of a compound word/phrase in German that is not easily understood is es tut mir Leid .