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Year 11 - German

Salzburg, Österreich: imperfect tense, extended writing (AQA)

Travel and Tourism: Wiederholung: Menschen und Orte

Unit Summary

This unit continues the focus on known grammar and vocabulary, with a spotlight on negation, adjective agreement, compound nouns, word pattern rules and read aloud practice of sound-symbol correspondences.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to use the imperfect and other tenses to complete exam-style writing tasks on the topics of holidays, people and places.

Key Notes

  • Weak verbs form the imperfect tense by adding these endings to the verb stem: -te, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten.
  • Strong verbs have irregular stems in the imperfect tense, with vowel changes and endings: -, st, -, en, t, en.
  • The imperfect tense of 'sein', 'haben', modal verbs and 'es gab' are commonly used in spoken as well as written German.
  • Use 'früher' with a past tense to mean 'in the past' or 'used to'.
  • The BORDER acronym is a useful tool to respond fully and accurately to bullet point writing prompts.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • imperfect: German single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing; for example, 'war', 'hatte', 'gab', 'fand'
  • BORDER: acronym used to respond fully and accurately to bullet point writing prompts

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • The imperfect tense is only ever written.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain what you can now say or understand in this lesson.

Weak verbs form the imperfect tense by adding these endings to the verb stem: -te, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten. Strong verbs have irregular stems in the imperfect tense, with vowel changes and endings: -, st, -, en, t, en.

2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'imperfect'

German single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing; for example, 'war', 'hatte', 'gab', 'fand'. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.

3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.

Mistake: The imperfect tense is only ever written. Correction: Whilst the imperfect tense is mainly used to narrate past events in written German, some forms are regularly used in spoken German, such as 'es gab', 'war' and 'hatte'.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 11 German guide library.