<p>And one more thing. The entire German grammar is taught in the first two semesters. Semesters III and IV concentrate on reading literature and writing. What you will really need to practice is speaking German. Maybe you could get that by joining a German conversation group. Writing in German is very different from writing in English, which would also take a lot of practice, which you won’t have by the end of the 4th semester. Most science papers are written in English anyway. (I know all of this because I took some German and one of our German Exchange students majored in English in University in Germany and also has a certificate to teach German to non-native German speakers as a second language. We talked about this.)</p>