Year 11 - German
Deutsche Geschichte: imperfect tense, perfect tense
Communication and the world around us: Geschichte
Study Hub
Study Guides
This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit revisits known grammar in the context of German and Austrian history. Pupils revise perfect tense and simple past, negation, word order and adjective agreement.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to apply a checklist of knowledge to support your use of the perfect and imperfect tenses, and can apply this when reading and writing in German.
Key Notes
- Confidence in forming the perfect tense is important for communicating past events. Revisit key verbs often.
- The perfect tense is more common in spoken German than the imperfect. Both can be used when writing in the past tense.
- The imperfect tense forms 'hatte', 'war', and 'es gab' are often used in spoken as well as written German.
- Learning imperfect tense endings, and the verb stems of strong verbs, will broaden your use of language in the past.
- Being familiar with a range of past tense verb forms will support your comprehension of written and spoken German.
Vocabulary To Learn
- perfect tense: past tense formed with the present tense of 'sein' or 'haben' and a past participle
- past participle: verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb 'sein' or 'haben'
- imperfect tense: single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Always use the imperfect tense to translate the English simple past, e.g., 'I chatted online.'
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain what you can now say or understand in this lesson.
Confidence in forming the perfect tense is important for communicating past events. Revisit key verbs often. The perfect tense is more common in spoken German than the imperfect. Both can be used when writing in the past tense.
2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'perfect tense'
past tense formed with the present tense of 'sein' or 'haben' and a past participle. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.
3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.
Mistake: Always use the imperfect tense to translate the English simple past, e.g., 'I chatted online.'. Correction: The perfect tense is far more common in German, used for past events in speaking and informal writing. The imperfect is used mainly to narrate past events in more formal writing. However, 'hatte', 'war' and 'es gab' are used in speaking too.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 11 German guide library.