Marktplatz: Lektion 09 – Unternehmensfinanzierung (DW)

2001

Students

Business & Communication

Autonomous learning

German

Any language

B2

Activity/task
Audio
Reference resources (online Dictionaries/ grammar guides/phrasebooks)

Vocabulary
Grammar

Listening
Writing
Reading

Prerequisites - The following course presumes a consolidated knowledge of German grammar and linguistic notions up to the B2 of the CEFR. In order to have full access to its contents, a PDF reading software is required.
Content - Marktplatz: Lektion 09 – Unternehmensfinanzierung is available on the broadcasting platform Deutsche Welle and is integral part of a series of 26 lessons focused on the business field. It is divided into three main didactical elements: an audio track (duration 24’04’’), a transcript of the audio track in PDF format, and the lesson itself in PDF format: the latter contains two reading comprehensions with related writing exercises, a vocabulary-related task, an oral comprehension task, bank-related lexicon, a cloze task, and the solutions to all the abovementioned tasks. The core of this lesson is the audio track, featuring a dialogue within a real-life scenario. Hence, Lektion 09 covers relevant language skills such as listening, reading comprehension, writing and also critical thinking (see cloze task). The business-related topics that are covered are: overdraft, corporate financing, bankruptcy and equity capital.
Target – It is aimed at autonomous learners who are willing to strengthen their intercultural competencies and business-related knowledge. Although it is conceived for self-study, it could also act as didactical material for an asynchron lesson within a classroom context.
Other features – The lesson being neatly arranged, its use is intuitive and easily accessible. Moreover, the Deutsche Welle platform offers wide-ranging content that makes up a rich and stimulating learning context.

The resource was evaluated for a group of students in a course for business German at level B2 (group size 16-20). Unfortunately the resource dates from 1998 and covers two fields that have been subject to constant changes over the last 20 years: IT and finance. The use of outdated (and nowadays incorrect) German orthography is also considered a risk when using the resource. The audio of 24 minutes comes without a clear structure or reference to the exercises.
The resource does not follow a clear structure and working instructions are sometimes unclear. Many exercises are based on the audio or transcript of the audio – the audio however is very long and not really intended for classroom use. Some parts of the resource could be updated/remodeled for use: Exercise 1 helps to develop vocabulary in the field, the reading tasks for exercise 2 and 3 are fine and the outdated text does not seem a big problem. I do not recommend exercises 4, 6 and 7
for use in classroom and neither for autonomous learning. Exercise 5 is a good task to amplify vocabulary.

The resource is available online at the abovementioned link. It is integral part of the online course “Martkplatz” by Deutsche Welle, which is overall composed of 26 chapters. Each and every chapter is based on: 1) A bilingual audio track 2) The original audio track 3) The transcript of the audio track 4) The “Lektion zum Herunterladen”, that is the core of the online lesson, with its content-related exercises and activities Number 1) and 2) are available both on the platform and for download in MP3 format, whereas number 3) and 4) can be downloaded in PDF format. Therefore, the use of a PDF reader is essential. The chapter is provided with a title and brief introduction of the topics. As the “Lektion zum Herunterladen” usually contains exercises related to the audio’s content, one should first focus on the listening and comprehension of the audio track and then move on to the study of the written content.