Schreibprojekt Nr 3

For your third writing project, we’ll be focusing on free-time activities, hobbies, and interests, but to get extra practice with 3rd person forms, you’re going to be writing about someone else, not yourself.

Imagine that you’re trying to set a friend of yours up on a blind date. You think you’ve found the perfect partner for him/her, and you want to describe this partner’s interests, hobbies, appearance, and any other factors that you think will make him/her appealing to your friend. So, you write a letter or note (it doesn’t need to be a formal letter) to your friend, describing this potential date.

You’ll need to use a lot of the vocabulary from Chapter 3 -- free-time activities and verbs. Remember that many of these are stem-changing verbs (er läuft, er sieht fern, etc), but an equal number are regular verbs (er kegelt, er spielt, etc), so be careful and check to make sure you’re using the correctly conjugated forms. You may want to include this person’s eating habits as well, probably using plural forms of the food items we learned. A lot depends on how creative you want to be: there’s no requirement that you have a funny or overly creative letter, but being humorous can be a good way to get interested in what you’re writing about, so if you have a good sense of humor, feel free to be outrageous or comic or whatever you like!

There are only five main questions you should be sure to answer when writing your note, but remember that you should expand on each of these topics, not just one sentence for each:

Wie sieht der Partner/die Partnerin aus?	Er/sie hat ____ Augen, ____ Haar, etc.
Wie ist seine/ihre Persönlichkeit (=personality)?	Er/sie ist freundlich, faul, lustig ...
Was macht er/sie gern? Was sind seine/ihre Hobbys?	(use free-time verbs)
Was isst er/sie gern?	(use food vocabulary)
Warum (=why) ist er/sie attraktiv/anziehend (=appealing)?	(describe why s/he is a good match)

Below is a short sample of what I might write for this assignment -- just an excerpt, however, so yours should be, perhaps, a little more detailed than this.

Jenny, ich kenne den perfekten Partner für dich! Er heißt Jim, und er ist 20 Jahre alt. Er hat braune Augen und schwarzes Haar, und er ist schlank und attraktiv. Er ist sehr freundlich, aber er ist auch intelligent und ein bisschen schüchtern (=shy). Er studiert Informatik, und er kann sehr gut am Computer arbeiten. Er spielt Volleyball sehr gern, und, genau wie du (=just like you), er geht sehr gern ins Kino. Sein Lieblingsfilm ist Reservoir Dogs, und er möchte den neuen Tarantino-Film sofort sehen. Ich denke, ihr könnt zusammen ins Kino gehen, vielleicht am Samstag! Er möchte dich kennen lernen, und ich bin sicher (=sure), ihr macht ein gutes Paar!

Like the previous assignment, this should be typed (it’s good practice for future semesters): please DOUBLE-SPACE your paragraph so that I have room for corrections. It should be approximately 50-60 words in length: that’s perhaps one more sentence than your previous assignment. As always, feel free to write more than that if you want to, although there’s no extra credit for longer work. And do ask me if you have things you want to say but can’t figure out: it’s a good idea to look something up in the dictionary and then check with a knowledgeable German speaker to make sure it’s really what you mean.

Remember that if you use constructions that have a direct object, you’ll need the accusative case, including the pronouns which we practiced in class: er möchte dich kennen lernen = he would like to get to know you.

Here are some words and phrases that you may find useful:

genau wie du ...................................... just like you	ich bin sicher ........................................... I’m sure
ihr macht ein gutes Paar ... you’ll make a good couple	Lieblings_____ ................................... favorite _____
zusammen ............................................... together	du kannst mir trauen ..................... you can trust me
ihr beide ............................................ both of you	ihr habt vieles gemeinsam ... you have a lot in common
eine Verabredung ....................................... a date	ihr passt gut zusammen ......... you make a good match
ich kenne den perfekten Partner ........ I know the perfect match (MALE)
ich kenne die perfekte Partnerin ..... I know the perfect match (FEMALE)

Grading criteria: obviously, correct vocabulary is very important for this topic, so that will be a major focus of grading. In addition, please double-check your verb forms and plural forms (if you use any) for accuracy, since that’s one main point of this writing project. Finally, try to use some conjunctions like und, aber and denn, since those help to string your sentences together and make a more coherent paragraph. As always, spelling is important, so do proofread your work carefully, and be careful of typos!