AQA AS German Past Papers & Mark Schemes

AQA AS German (specification 7661) builds proficiency in German through thematic study of contemporary German-speaking society, requiring students to engage with social, cultural, and political topics in the target language. Spanning 35 past papers across listening, reading, writing, and speaking assessments, students can build the linguistic confidence needed for all three examined components. The receptive skills examination (1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks, 45%) presents authentic German-language materials across listening and reading sections. Listening passages include interviews, news broadcasts, and discussions on themes relating to German-speaking societies. Reading passages present authentic texts — Zeitungsartikel (newspaper articles), Blogbeiträge (blog posts), and extracts from contemporary German writing. Students answer comprehension questions in both German and English, complete a translation from German into English, and produce a summary. The translation section specifically tests the ability to convey meaning naturally in the target language rather than rendering a mechanical word-for-word conversion. The productive writing paper (1 hour 30 minutes, 80 marks, 25%) opens with a translation from English into German — testing case system accuracy, verb placement, and complex sentence structure — and an extended essay of approximately 300 words in German on one of four studied sub-themes: Familie im Wandel (the changing nature of family), die digitale Welt (the digital world), Jugendkultur: Mode, Musik und Fernsehen (youth culture: fashion, music, and television), and Festivals und Traditionen (festivals and traditions). Paper 3: Speaking (12–14 minutes, 60 marks, 30%) involves discussion of a stimulus card followed by wider conversation about aspects of German-speaking society. The assessment rewards fluency, spontaneity, accuracy, and the ability to express and justify complex opinions in spoken German. The specification examines German as it is actually used in contemporary media, literature, and public discourse — students engage with the language as a living medium of communication rather than a set of grammatical rules to be memorised in isolation.