FSI German Basic Course Drills (With Modifications)

Overview

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) German Basic Course is a two-volume German course published in 1961 (Volume 1) and 1965 (Volume 2) by the FSI, which is a division of the U.S. Department of State. Each volume contains twelve units. The course is based on the audio-lingual method of language learning. Modern courses tend to use a different method, such as the communicative method, which de-emphasizes the repetitive drills of the audio-lingual method. Nevertheless, some amount of grammar drills are useful, and the German Basic Course offers a large number of ready-made drills that can supplement whatever primary course a user is following. Only selected drills are included, with an emphasis on substitution, conversion, and verb-and-preposition drills. (More detail on the deck contents is provided in a later section.) The Tag field indicates the unit and grammar topic. Generally, one prompt in the course equals one card in the deck. This prompt can range from a single word (with a model sentence showing the position of the word) to a sentence (with English instructions describing the desired transformation). Audio is not included.

It is not recommended that users review all notes in the deck in order. Rather, users should use the Tags field to select a subset of cards for the grammar topic they want to review or study (e.g., adjective declension, passive voice, relative clauses, etc...).

Many of the notes in this deck (approximately 10%) have been modified slightly from their original form to modernize the spelling or align with more modern usage. For example, ‘Fräulein X’ has been replaced with ‘Frau X’ throughout. Documentation on these changes and other documentation for the deck is in the wiki in the git repository at: https://github.com/ghrgriner/fsi-german-drills/wiki. Some documentation is also retained on this page, but this page is only updated when a new version of the deck is released. Users are therefore encouraged to check the wiki for up-to-date documentation.

License

The Tags field (not present in the original course) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The other slight modifications mentioned in the previous paragraph are released under Creative Commons CC0. This deck is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author(s) of the original course or by the FSI.

• URL of a human-readable summary of the CC BY 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• URL of the license itself. The summary is not a substitute for the license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
• URL of the CC0 summary. The summary is not a substitute for the legal text: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• URL of the CC0 legal text: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

Copyright

The Tags field and slight modifications to the original notes are © 2020, 2025 by Ray Griner.

Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability

Note the disclaimer of warranties in the CC BY 4.0 license:

Section 5 – Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.

• a. Unless otherwise separately undertaken by the Licensor, to the extent possible, the Licensor offers the Licensed Material as-is and as-available, and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the Licensed Material, whether express, implied, statutory, or other. This includes, without limitation, warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or the presence or absence of errors, whether or not known or discoverable. Where disclaimers of warranties are not allowed in full or in part, this disclaimer may not apply to You.
• b. To the extent possible, in no event will the Licensor be liable to You on any legal theory (including, without limitation, negligence) or otherwise for any direct, special, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive, exemplary, or other losses, costs, expenses, or damages arising out of this Public License or use of the Licensed Material, even if the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such losses, costs, expenses, or damages. Where a limitation of liability is not allowed in full or in part, this limitation may not apply to You.
• c. The disclaimer of warranties and limitation of liability provided above shall be interpreted in a manner that, to the extent possible, most closely approximates an absolute disclaimer and waiver of all liability.

Note the disclaimer of warranties in the CC0 legal text:

4. Limitations and Disclaimers.

• a. No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
• b. Affirmer offers the Work as-is and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the Work, express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including without limitation warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non infringement, or the absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or the present or absence of errors, whether or not discoverable, all to the greatest extent permissible under applicable law.
• c. Affirmer disclaims responsibility for clearing rights of other persons that may apply to the Work or any use thereof, including without limitation any person's Copyright and Related Rights in the Work. Further, Affirmer disclaims responsibility for obtaining any necessary consents, permissions or other rights required for any use of the Work.
• d. Affirmer understands and acknowledges that Creative Commons is not a party to this document and has no duty or obligation with respect to this CC0 or use of the Work.

Version

This is v1.4 of the deck. See the linked repository for the version history.

Language Topic tag

There are over 100 unique tags indicating the language topic. Tag assignment is usually done at the question level, and additional information specific to the prompt (e.g., gender for noun-prompts and verb subject when the drill is to decline a verb) is not part of the tag, although this might be added in the future to its own field on the deck. It seems best to describe the parts of each tag, rather than each tag individually. Each tag is assembled from parts either sequentially (where each part of the tag represents a part of the response in the same order, e.g. 'der.adj.nom' = der-word, followed by adjective, followed by noun in nominative case) or hierarchically, where tag parts provide more detailed information about the grammar topic (vc.pass.fut = verb conjugation, passive, future tense). It is recommended that users select groups of tags together, e.g. tag:pass to select all drills on the passive voice of verbs. Counts are not mutually exclusive.

• 2way – two-way prepositions (n=66)
• acc, nom, dat, gen – accusative (n=999), nominative (n=807), dative (n=678), or genitive case (n=274)
• adj – adjective (n=763)
• comp, sup – comparative (n=59), superlative (n=76)
• eq – equality in adjective comparisons (n=24)
• pred – predicate adjective (n=38)
• der – der-word, i.e. a specifier that takes endings like ‘der’ (n=983)
• ein – ein-word, i.e. a specifier that takes endings like ‘ein’ (n=728)
• sing, pl – singular, plural [not consistently used]
• date – calendar date (n=39)
• time, time.form, time.viertel, time.nachvor – Various ways of expressing time (n=76), form=formal (X Uhr Y), viertel = (viertel zwei, dreiviertel zwei), nachvor = fünf nach/vor zwei
• order, order.sep, order.sub – word order for separable verbs or subordinate clauses (n=58)
• alle, einige, ep, etw, mehr, nichts, viel, wenig – Usually followed by ‘.adj’. Indicates drills for specifier declension or adjective declension after: alle (n=15), ein paar (n=45), etwas (n=14), mehr (n=14), nichts (n=6), viel(e) (n=18), wenig (n=27), mehrwenig (n=7): both mehr and wenig in same drill
• spec – specifier (n=46), multiple types of specifiers in same question
• seit – time expressions with seit (n=21)
• unp – unpreceded adjective (n=135), includes adjectives after phrases like ‘ein paar’ where the adjective declines as if it were unpreceded
• pop – possessive pronoun (n=130)
• rel - relative clause (n=258; followed by two tags indicating case of the word the clause refers to and the case of the relative pronoun in the relative clause)
• qw – question word (n=26)
• temp – temperature (n=13)
• einunp – mixture of ein-words and unpreceded adjectives (n=38)
• einder – mixture of ein-words and der-words adjectives (n=30)
• vc – verb conjugation, emphasis on grammar (n=491)
• fut, past, pastp – future (n=42), past (n=214), past participle (n=162; perfect), usually used with vc
• pass – passive voice (n=96)
• vcon – verb conjugation, emphasis on conjugation of a single infinitive (n=167)
• no – noun, but most of the time a noun can be assumed
• wf - was für (n=24)
• imp – imperative (n=10)
• coco – coordinating conjunctions (n=8)
• conj – conjunctions (n=10)
• nnpart – partitive with two nouns in nominative case (ein Glas Bier) (n=7)
• pro – pronoun practice (sometimes nouns are mixed in) (n=149)
• vap – verb and preposition (n=59)

The complete list of tags of language topics is listed below:

['2way.acc' '2way.dat' 'adj.comp' 'adj.comp.pop' 'adj.eq' 'adj.pred' 'adj.sup.acc' 'adj.sup.nom' 'alle.adj.dat' 'alle.adj.nom' 'am.date' 'coco' 'conj' 'der.acc' 'der.accdat' 'der.adj.acc' 'der.adj.acc.pl' 'der.adj.comp.acc' 'der.adj.dat' 'der.adj.dat.der.adj.gen' 'der.adj.dat.pl' 'der.adj.ein.gen' 'der.adj.gen' 'der.adj.nom' 'der.adj.nom.der.gen' 'der.adj.nom.pl' 'der.adj.nom.sing' 'der.adj.sup.acc' 'der.adj.sup.dat' 'der.adj.sup.gen' 'der.adj.sup.nom' 'der.dat' 'der.date.acc' 'der.date.nom' 'der.gen' 'der.nom' 'ein.acc' 'ein.acc.der.adj.gen.pl' 'ein.acc.pop' 'ein.adj.acc' 'ein.adj.acc.pl' 'ein.adj.comp.acc' 'ein.adj.comp.dat' 'ein.adj.comp.nom' 'ein.adj.dat' 'ein.adj.dat.sing' 'ein.adj.gen' 'ein.adj.nom' 'ein.adj.nom.pl' 'ein.adj.nom.sing' 'ein.adj.sup.acc' 'ein.adj.sup.nom' 'ein.dat' 'ein.dat.pop' 'einder.adj.acc' 'einder.adj.dat' 'einder.dat' 'ein.gen' 'einige.adj.acc' 'ein.nnpart' 'ein.nom' 'ein.nom.npl' 'ein.nom.pop' 'einunp.adj.acc' 'einunp.adj.dat' 'einunp.adj.nom' 'ep.acc' 'ep.adj.acc' 'ep.adj.dat' 'ep.adj.nom' 'etw.adj.acc' 'etw.no.acc' 'imp.du.ihr' 'mehr.no.acc' 'mehrwenig.acc.no' 'nichts.adj.acc' 'noart.jobs' 'noun.acc' 'npl.acc' 'npl.dat' 'npl.nom' 'order' 'order.sep' 'order.sub' 'order.sub.qw' 'pop.acc.der.adj.gen.pl' 'pop.acc.der.gen' 'pop.acc.ein.adj.dat.pl' 'pop.nom.der.gen' 'pred.adj.comp' 'pred.adj.sup' 'prep.bei' 'pro.acc' 'pro.dat' 'pro.nom' 'rel.acc.acc' 'rel.acc.dat' 'rel.acc.gen' 'rel.acc.nom' 'rel.dat.acc' 'rel.dat.dat' 'rel.dat.gen' 'rel.dat.nom' 'rel.gen.acc' 'rel.gen.dat' 'rel.gen.gen' 'rel.gen.nom' 'rel.nom.acc' 'rel.nom.dat' 'rel.nom.gen' 'rel.nom.nom' 'seit.dur' 'spec.acc' 'spec.adj.acc' 'spec.dat' 'spec.nom' 'temp.adj' 'time.dur' 'time.form' 'time.gen' 'time.heute' 'time.nachvor' 'time.pt' 'time.viertel' 'unp.adj' 'unp.adj.acc' 'unp.adj.acc.pl' 'unp.adj.comp.acc' 'unp.adj.dat' 'unp.adj.nom' 'unp.adj.nom.pl' 'vap' 'vc.du.ihr' 'vc.fut' 'vcon.anstellen' 'vcon.arbeiten' 'vcon.bleiben' 'vcon.duerfen' 'vcon.essen' 'vcon.fahren' 'vcon.haben' 'vcon.kennen' 'vcon.koennen' 'vcon.kommen' 'vcon.moechten' 'vcon.muessen' 'vcon.mult' 'vcon.treffen' 'vcon.trinken' 'vcon.verstehen' 'vcon.waschen' 'vcon.werden' 'vcon.wissen' 'vcon.wohnen' 'vcon.wollen' 'vc.pass.fut' 'vc.pass.past' 'vc.pass.pastp' 'vc.pass.pres' 'vc.past' 'vc.pastp' 'vc.pastp.mod' 'viel.adj.acc' 'viel.no.acc' 'viel.unc.acc.no' 'vocab.sichfreuen' 'weniger.no.acc' 'wenig.no.acc' 'wf.acc' 'wf.adj.nom' 'wf.ein.acc']

Note on the Samples Below

HTML tags <u> and </u> are often used in the deck to indicate the position of the desired response in the model sentence and the position of the completed response in the answer. These tags correctly generate underlined text in the deck but do not display as underlined in the samples below. The wiki in the repository also presents examples of cards. The examples in the wiki may be more interesting than the examples automatically chosen by AnkiWeb.