In effect, the two exercises illustrate how moving from one set of Standards (Exercise A--communications, Exercise B, connections) to the next can represent the "i + 1" in a learning progression.

     Exercise A asked students to focus on particular exchanges and reduce them to their core language.  In addition, students must practice short introductory clauses (er sagt / ich sage) that allows them to review verb endings and familiar rhetorical patterns.

     Exercise B, simply by posing the same logic as a descriptive or third person task, places not one but two linguistic demands on the students.  Unless the teacher tells students to quote the text directly, the class undertaking Exercise B may need to use subordinate word order (the quote "wo sind meine Eltern" versus the observation "wo seine Eltern sind") and switch personal pronouns from the first to the third person (meine / seine).  Thus, the choice of exercise type will depend on the one hand on whether the teacher feels students are sufficiently challenged by having to display understanding of the verbal exchanges in the text (Exercise A) or whether they are ready for an assignment that asks them to alter word order and pronominal usage.  It will also depend on what in-class activity is to be built on these exercises.

     For example, Exercise A would lead to an in-class reenactment of the scene -- perhaps with new endings or American variants, such as Frau Kramer instructing Beckmann to use a new tool that he had never seen before: a telephone book that lists current addresses.  Exercise B would be appropriate as a preparatory stage for short summaries of the scene (see exercises for Phase 4 in Unit 7 below) or, possibly for opinion statements if negation or appropriate adjectives have been studied previously ("Beckmann weiß nicht, wo seine Eltern sind," "Frau Kramer ist nicht nett").

 EXERCISES A & B: Grade 8
 EXERCISES A & B: Grade 12