This is no grammar podcast but it is the speech which I prepared for Memorial Day 2010 in Chagrin Falls. Although we managed to get in most of the Memorial Day festivities, my speech was rained out or "thundered out." I guess I shouldn't feel too bad as President Obama's speech in Chicago was also rained out.

The topic of my speech was "We are Chagrin! We are America!" In the speech I give thanks to the American GI's who helped my family and me at the conclusion of World War 2 and who by putting us in contact with American Methodist missionaries helped us come to America. In my speech I also honor the eleven graduates from Chagrin Falls High School who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I promised the people in attendance at the cemetery that I would make this podcast.

To those who are wondering why I haven't been making any grammar podcast I promise you that I will start making them again soon. I am teaching my last German class at Chagrin this year and it is my plan to put together an online German course, which if you are a serious German student I am certain that you will like...

"Das Maedchen bringt dem Lehrer den Apfel. Dem Lehrer bringt das Maedchen den Apfel. Den Apfel bringt das Maedchen dem Lehrer." What do the three sentences have in common? They all mean "The girl brings the teacher the apple." How is this possible? Listen to this podcast as the teacher tries to explain why and how.

The purpose of this podcast was to create a cheatsheet which would help students write better simple German sentences. There were three objectives: To help students form simple sentences consisting of a subject, a verb, an indirect object and a direct object. To convince students to accept that subjects in German are always in the nominative case, indirect objects in the dative case, and direct objects in the accusative case. To motivate students to memorize the definite and indefinite articles of der, die, das, die in the nominative, dative and accusative cases.

This podcast is about tenses in the active voice, indicative mood. It is not a lecture but an exercise podcast. Students will hear the three principal parts of sixteen verbs and their perfect infinitives. They will then hear the verb in one of the tenses and be asked to transform it into another tense. The teacher will provide the correct answers.

The teacher explains how to form the present, past, and future perfect tenses using the perfect infinitive. Yes, he also explains what is meant by perfect infinitive.

The future tense in German consists of WERDEN and the PRESENT ACTIVE INFINITIVE. Examples: WIR WERDEN SPIELEN - WE WILL PLAY, WIR WERDEN GEHEN - WE WILL GO

The future perfect tense in German consists of WERDEN and the PERFECT ACTIVE INFINITIVE. Examples: WIR WERDEN GESPIELT HABEN - WE WILL HAVE PLAYED, WIR WERDEN GEGANGEN SEIN - WE WILL HAVE GONE

What is a PRESENT ACTIVE INFINITIVE? It is the infinitive that we learned in Level 1 German, just with a fancier name.

What is a PERFECT ACTIVE INFINITIVE? TO HAVE PLAYED - GESPIELT HABEN and TO HAVE GONE - GEGANGEN SEIN are examples of perfect infinitives. They consist of the helping verb TO HAVE - HABEN or SEIN and a PAST PARTICIPLE.

Listen to the podcast if you need or want a more detailed explanation!

The teacher explores two uses of SEIN and PAST PARTICIPLES in this podcast episode.

He discusses SEIN as a mainverb and linking verb together with a PAST PARTICIPLE that is used as a predicate adjective. He discusses the SEIN or statal passive voice.

The main purpose of this podcast is to help students become HABEN and SEIN experts.

The students know when to conjugate verbs with "haben" and when with "sein" in the present and past perfect tenses, active voice, indicative mood. They are confused, however, when they see or hear what they perceive to be "haben-verbs" used with "sein" and "sein-verbs" used with "haben." Why are they confused? What confuses them? The teacher tries to explain some of the reasons in this podcast.

The teacher makes recommendations to help students determine when to use the helping verb "sein" in forming the indicative mood, active voice, present and past perfect tenses in German.

This episode is about the English preposition to and its German equivalents zu, nach, in, an and auf. Determining which preposition to use can be confusing, but it need not be, if we remember the teacher's eleven hints for selecting the right German preposition for to.