In this article, the author describes his "Business German" course. His course sought to narrate a dialectic of agency and institution. He started by asserting a distinction between the intending subject--with its plural desires, interests, and identifications--and the world it acts in, through and upon. This distinction between acting subject and acted upon object opens a space for normativity, whether normativity refers to classist, sexist, racist norms or norms of justice, equality or fulfillment. By contrast, a salient tradition of left thought closes the normative space by positing an identical subject/object of history--a biological entity whose subjectivity is an effect concealing the objective determination of its available roles and identities. The basic idea for his course came from the international "anti-globalization" organization ATTAC (Association pour une Taxation des Transactions Financieres por I'aide aux Citoyens), founded in France in 1998 by Ignacio Ramonet and Bernard Cassen. Thus, "ATTAC+German" became his guiding language acquisition model. His course has four segments: (1) The Labor Market; (2) Marketing and Consumption; (3) Financial System; and (4) Corporate Structure. Throughout these four segments students addressed the essential tension of economic politics: activism and public policy. (Contains 4 notes.)