Tag Archives: German Olympiad

Events and Competitions, German, Resources for language study

OXFORD GERMAN OLYMPIAD 2025

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The Oxford German Network have launched the 13th edition of its annual German Olympiad! The competition will run between now and March 2025 with winners being announced in the summer.

This year’s topic is “Spiel und Sport”. 

Photo by Dave Photoz on Unsplash

There are a variety of different challenges aimed at pupils in Years 5 and 6 all the way to Years 12 and 13. Some are for individuals to enter, others are aimed at groups. There is even a taster competition for pupils who have never studied German before! From drawing to creating board games, puzzles, and video games, there’s something for everyone! Take a look at the Olympiad website for more details.

Pupils should:

  • Choose one of the tasks appropriate for their age group.
  • Complete all tasks in German, unless indicated otherwise.
  • Refer to the full competition details and guidelines for word count guidance.

Please note:

  • All entries must be submitted via the online entry form. 
  • Each participant may only enter for one task within their age group as an individual entrant. We will only accept group entries (2-4 participants) for the “Open Competition for Groups” category. 
  • We require a consent form for under-13 participants. Click here to download the form.

Note to teachers: Teachers will be able to submit their students´ entries in bulk. Please contact olympiad@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for instructions.

The closing date for all entries is Thursday, 6 March 2025 at 12 noon.

If you have any questions, please contact the Olympiad Coordinator, Eva, at: olympiad@mod-langs-ox.ac.uk

We look forward to receiving lots of entries!

Events and Competitions, German, German language, German Literature

German Olympiad – round 2!

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Great news: Round 2 of the Oxford German Olympiad 2024 is now open for entries! The Olympiad is an annual competition run by the Oxford German Network for learners and speakers of German from ages 9 to 18.

The theme of this year’s Olympiad is Kafkaesque Kreatures, taking inspiration from the animal stories by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who gave the German and English languages the word kafkaesk / Kafkaesque to describe a weird, disturbing experience. 

Image taken from the Oxford German Network website.

There are three Round 2 tasks to choose from this year, with exciting cash prizes for the winners of each task:

  • Oxford German Network Task
  • The White Rose Prize: Einen Brief schreiben
  • Camden House Book Proposal

Winners and runners-up will be invited to a prize-giving ceremony at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, in June 2024.

Further details about the tasks and the competition in general can be found here. The deadline for all entries is 7 March 2024 at 12 noon.

Please note:

  • students may enter only one of the three Round 2 tasks
  • there are age restrictions for each task
  • Round 1 and Round 2 of the Olympiad are separate competitions. Students may enter both, but do not need to have entered Round 1 in order to enter Round 2.

There’s also still time to enter Round 1! Find details here.

Events and Competitions, German, Resources for language study

OXFORD GERMAN OLYMPIAD 2024

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The Oxford German Network have launched the 12th edition of its annual Olympiad Competition! The competition will run between now and March 2024 with winners being announced in June.

2024 theme: Kafkaesque Kreatures

This year’s competition is all about animals – but from perspectives with a difference. The tasks take inspiration from the animal stories by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who gave the German and English languages the word kafkaesk / Kafkaesque to describe a weird, disturbing experience. Imagine waking up one morning and finding you’ve turned into a beetle. Or that you’re an animal living in a burrow, worrying about your animal enemies up above. But the animal perspectives aren’t all about weirdness – Kafka was a vegetarian. And his story about the ape Rotpeter shows deep concerns about how humans treat animals.

Image by Piyapong Saydaung on Pixabay

The Competition Tasks

There are a variety of different challenges aimed at pupils in Years 5 and 6 all the way to Years 12 and 13. Some are for individuals to enter, others are aimed at groups. There is even a taster competition for pupils who have never studied German before! From drawing and painting to writing stories and planning conferences, there’s something for everyone! Take a look at the Olympiad website for more details.

You should:

Please note:

  • All entries must be submitted via the online entry form. 
  • Each participant may only enter for one task within their age group as an individual entrant. We will only accept group entries (2-4 participants) for the “Open Competition for Groups” category. 
  • We require a consent form for under-13 participants. Click here to download the form.

Note to teachers: Teachers will be able to submit their students´ entries in bulk. Please contact olympiad@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for instructions.

Further resources & information

Click here for some thoughts and ideas about this year’s tasks. You can also find the Kafka texts and creatures mentioned in the tasks here.

The closing date for all entries is Thursday, 7 March 2024 at 12 noon.

Results will be announced on the Oxford German Network website in June 2024. Winners will be contacted by e-mail.

Any questions? Please email the OGN Coordinator.

Events and Competitions, German language

Competition news from the Oxford German Network

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Colleagues at the Oxford German Network have just launched Round 2 of this year’s Oxford German Olympiad; the competition features a choice of creative tasks aimed at school pupils in age groups ranging from Year 10 to Year 13.

Two of the new tasks are sponsored by the White Rose Project, which is investigating the story of the White Rose resistance group. The competition tasks focus on resistance member Sophie Scholl, who would have had her one hundredth birthday in 2021. The third task asks entrants to consider the parallels between the 1920s and 2020s.

There are cash prizes available for the winning entries. Full details of all Oxford German Olympiad competitions are available on the OGN’s website here.

Events and Competitions, German life

2020 German Olympiad: NATUR UND TECHNIK

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The Oxford German Olympiad 2020 launched on 26 September 2019, the European Day of Languages! The topic is NATUR UND TECHNIK (Nature and Technology). There are tasks for learners of German in Year 5 to Year 13, tasks for group entries, and even some tasks for complete beginners.  The deadline for entries is noon on Friday 13 March 2020. You can find the full competition and submission guidelines here. Read on to see an outline of this year’s tasks…

Years 5 and 6 (age 9-11):

  • Design a robot and label its parts, and write what it can do.
  • Draw a picture of your home city, town or village from a Vogelperspektive – bird’s eye view. Label the things the bird is most interested in.
  • You’re going to set up a community on Mars – draw your spaceship and the fifteen most important things to take, and label them.

Years 7 to 9 (age 11-14):

  • Create a poster explaining Klimawandel.
  • Find out about Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman. What technical invention would he choose to take back to his community if he could time-travel? Draw Ötzi with a speech bubble explaining his choice, and illustrate and describe the invention.
  • Create a blogpost on a topic of your choice, with 3-5 photos taken by yourself, for a German-language online conservation magazine.

Years 10 and 11 (age 14-16):

  • “Ein Tag ohne Technik” – Write a story or create a video or website on this theme.
  • Paint or draw a landscape in the style of Caspar David Friedrich and write about the work of art that inspired it.
  • “Machen wir unsere Erde unbewohnbar?” Write a dialogue between two people who disagree about the answer.

Years 12 and 13 (age 16-18):

  • “Klimawandel – was können Jugendliche tun?” Plan a conference for 16-18 year olds including the advertisement and programme with keynote lectures and topics for roundtable discussion.
  • “Vorsprung durch Technik – Rückschritt für die Natur?” Write a blogpost or create a video with this title.
  • Record yourself giving a presentation on “Fahrerloser Verkehr – Utopie oder künftige Wirklichkeit?” or “Techno-Pop – Typisch deutsch?” .

Open Competition for Groups or Classes (4+ participants)

  • Create a film or PowerPoint presentation with the title “Amazonas in Gefahr”.
  • Write and illustrate a short book for children about a migrating bird.
  • “Ein Roboter in der Schule!” – Create a video or song about a robot designed for helping with practical tasks in your school.

Discover German – Taster Competition (1-3 participants with no prior experience of studying German)

  • Years 7 to 9: Find 10 inventions from German-speaking countries and the German word for each invention. Film yourself saying the German and the English word for each of your 10 examples.
  • Years 10 and 11: Rewrite (in English) the Grimm Brothers’ story of “The Frog Prince” (Der Froschkönig) with the title “The Robot Prince”, setting it in a real modern German-speaking city and including 15 German compound nouns (like Frosch+König).
  • Years 12 and 13: Write a blogpost on the topic “Will machine translation make human translators obsolete?” and support your argument with examples from German.