When I communicate with my students over e-mail, assigning extra homework or answering questions that they have between lessons, I generally try to do it in German. The more exposure language learners have to their target language the faster they’ll learn — just like fitness training. However, every once in a while this can lead to a temporary misunderstanding, which then turns into an interesting and real life lesson. The positive element of these lessons is that they tend to stick better than others.
The other week I had one such situation with a B1 level student. My student wanted to reschedule a lesson and suggested two times. Unfortunately, neither of the suggested times worked for me, as they were already booked by other lessons. In my e-mail response I used the two-part conjunction “weder…noch” (neither…nor). My student on the other have understood “entweder…oder” (either…or) and e-mailed me asking me to please choose the time from the two suggested.
We’ve moved. You’ll find the full article here: http://marathonsprachen.com/5-ways-to-negate-in-german-besides-using-nicht/