It should be clear that you will be writing a few seminar papers during your German studies. So that you don't have to write your texts like Kafka on his Oliver 5 typewriter, the University of Oldenburg, in co-operation with Microsoft, offers you a licence for Office 365 Education licence.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has severely restricted the offer so that Office can only be used in the browser, for example. However, the university has introduced a workaround to avoid this problem for registered Office users.

Alternatively, you can also use the free Libre Office as an alternative.

For academic writing, you must of course cite all the literature you use correctly. Be warned against plagiarism! However, with multiple sources, reference management and creating a bibliography can quickly become a tedious task. Some of us therefore use literature management software so that we can concentrate on the essentials - the content. With the help of such programmes, you can create your bibliography within a few seconds depending on the desired citation style and keep track of your previously researched sources.

The University of Oldenburg offers you campus licences for the programmes EndNote and Citavi. This gives you access to the full version of both programmes. For Apple users, we recommend Zotero.

Citavi is a reference management programme for Windows operating systems. For MacOS there is only a version for the web browser. We therefore recommend other reference management programmes for MacOS.

EndNote is fortunately available for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS operating systems. There is also a web-based version of the programme, EndNote online. However, EndNote is only available in an English-language version.

Zotero is recommended as a German-language reference management programme if you work with a Macbook. Zotero is free software, so you can use it free of charge even without a campus licence.

You can find numerous tutorials for all programmes on YouTube.

Some of us love them, others of us hate them - written exams. In any case, you won't be able to avoid written exams in the three basic modules. Flashcards are very suitable for exam preparation when it comes to factual knowledge - even if you also have to use your brain in German studies.

Some of us use the free programme Ankiso that you never have to lug your flashcards around in paper form again and creating them in digital form is also much quicker. You can also use ready-made piles from the Anki community for a wide range of topics.

Thanks to this worldwide community, you will find numerous tutorials for Anki on YouTube.