Work, travel and reviews

These texts are longer than anything so far, and most of them are arguing. The skill is separating what happened from what the writer makes of it.

Facts are usually plain or passive. Opinion is marked: meiner Meinung nach, mich stört, ehrlich gesagt, trotzdem, was ich vorschlagen würde.

Two habits carry most of the work at this length.

• Einerseits … andererseits … Trotzdem …

  a writer conceding before concluding

  the conclusion is almost always after the last connector

• Eine Kollegin hat mir erzählt, dass …

  somebody else’s view, reported

  reported speech hands the sentence to another person — not the writer

And when a text criticises something, read carefully who is being criticised. A review can praise the staff and blame the management in the same paragraph.

One form in these texts is recognise-only. When German reports what somebody said, written German often uses a special verb form: er sagte, er sei müde, man wolle das prüfen, ein Baum liege auf der Strecke. This is the Konjunktiv I.

You are not expected to produce Konjunktiv I at B1. Read sei, habe, wolle, müsse and liege as ordinary ist, hat, will, muss and liegt — the form only signals "somebody else said this".

• Die Antwort war, dass man das erst nach einem Jahr beurteilen wolle.

  The answer was that they wanted to assess it only after a year.

  wolle = will, marked as reported

• Uns wurde gesagt, dass ohne Reservierung nichts frei sei.

  We were told that nothing was free without a reservation.

  sei = ist, marked as reported

You already know how to report things the way you will be asked to: Er hat gesagt, dass … That stays the form you produce.