After a little conversation time about his plans for the upcoming weekend, we watched most of the Easy German video: What would you change in your life? We addressed unfamiliar vocabulary and briefly reviewed the past conditional.

We continued working on these useful phrases, which we combined with brief discussions on the particular subjects relating to the environment.

Today we spent our time reading the headlines and conversing about two topics we found on a popular German current affairs website
(popularity of the AfD in Eastern states at General election and differences that still exist between East and West Germany / popularity of electric cars in Germany and particularly TESLA)

Joshua joined late, because the internet connection was weak.

We talked about his trip to Liberty University and briefly about the election results in Germany. I gave him the links to 3 podcasts and recommended that he should try to listen to them to learn about the important issues in Germany and so that we can talk about the elections.

In our lesson, we worked on the first of the exercises I had copied into our shared file, but that Joshua did not get to this weekend.
Joshua practiced using 3 different ways go give a reason.

We started out talking about our long weekend and Joshua´s upcoming trip to Virginia. We then reviewed the concept of the comparative of adjectives to make sure he is able to work on the exercises I had copied into our Google Docs file for him to work on during his trip. These exercises also focus on practicing the use of dependent clauses as well as useful phrases to give a reason.

We started out talking about his upcoming trip to Liberty University and his feelings about going away for college. Joshua did well formulating his reasons.

In our unit on the environment, we continued working on the CO2 footprint calculator. Today Joshua answered questions regarding his nutritional habits and energy use around the house.

Joshua is doing very well. He is able to address himself clearly. Today, just like in every lesson, we work on expression, and I provide specific vocabulary when needed.

After spending a few minutes talking about the past week, we continued our lesson on the environment. We discussed the issues of taking bath vs. a shower, reading paper books vs. e-readers, using plastic vs. paper bags and using the dishwasher vs. washing dishes by hand. Joshua read a paragraph on each that explained what is best for the environment and why. We also started taking a test that is going to identify our CO2 footprint.

No lesson due to technical problems
Nicole tried to assist, but we could not make the video connection work. It appeared to be a programming issue.

Today we continued talking about the alternatives to cars Germany and other European countries offer and how young people grow up with a lot more independence, because they can get around in town on bicycles. We also started looking at recycling as another significant difference between Germany and the US