Writing - Schriftlicher Ausdruck
What writing in Scholarship German demands
You produce extended German texts from prompts that specify an audience, a purpose and usually a genre - article, reader's letter, speech, blog post, report or argumentative essay (Erörterung). Assessment is holistic: quality and development of ideas, range and accuracy of language, cohesion, and control of register and text conventions.
Core rules
- Before drafting, identify audience, purpose, genre and register (du or Sie), and hold them consistently to the last line.
- Shape: an Einleitung that states a position, a Hauptteil of two or three developed arguments, and a Schluss that weighs rather than repeats.
- Develop each argument as claim → evidence or example → consequence. Unsupported opinion earns little.
- Cohesion comes from connectors used correctly: zwar … doch, einerseits … andererseits, allerdings, dennoch, folglich, indem, sodass, statt dass.
- Range means controlled complexity: relative clauses, um … zu, passive and its alternatives (lässt sich, ist zu), Konjunktiv II for proposals.
- Accuracy basics: verb second in main clauses, verb final in subordinate clauses, genitive after wegen, trotz, während, innerhalb, and clearly written umlauts and ß.
Worked example
Weak: Ich finde Handys in der Schule schlecht. Stronger: Zwar ermöglichen Smartphones einen schnellen Zugriff auf Informationen, doch ohne klare Regeln werden sie im Unterricht vor allem zur Ablenkung – nicht zuletzt deshalb fordern viele Lehrkräfte ein Verbot. Reasoning: zwar … doch concedes and then counters, which reads as balanced; the passive werden … zur Ablenkung keeps focus on the effect; nicht zuletzt deshalb links cause to consequence and prepares the conclusion. The register suits a reader's letter.
Traps
Recycled memorised essays that answer a different question; ambitious structures you cannot finish (a half-built Konjunktiv); English word order (Ich denke, dass es ist gut); ignoring genre markers such as headline or salutation; writing far beyond the task and buying errors.