Year 8 - German
Narrate a new experience: perfect tense with 'haben'
New experiences: perfect tense with 'haben' and 'sein'
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit revisits the perfect tense with both haben and sein, as well as a range of sound-symbol correspondences.Within the context of new experiences, pupils can apply this to school, home or travel experiences.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to use the perfect tense with 'haben' to understand and narrate a short sequence of past events.
Key Notes
- The German alphabet has 26 standard letters, like English, and four additional characters [ä], [ö], [ü] and ß.
- The umlaut letters [ä], [ö], [ü] sound very different from [a], [o] and [u] and require practice.
- Sentence building is the process of creating meaningful sentences using knowledge of both vocabulary and grammar.
- The perfect tense with most verbs uses the present tense of the verb 'haben' together with a past participle.
- For strong past participles, ge- and –en sandwich the stem; the stem may have a vowel change, too.
Vocabulary To Learn
- umlaut: pair of dots ( ¨ ) placed over the vowels a, o, u in German to indicate a change in pronunciation
- sentence building: creating meaningful sentences using knowledge of both vocabulary and grammar
- perfect tense: 2-verb tense that describes completed actions in the past e.g., 'I said', 'she played'
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- If a verb is 'strong', its past participle always has a vowel change.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain what you can now say or understand in this lesson.
The German alphabet has 26 standard letters, like English, and four additional characters [ä], [ö], [ü] and ß. The umlaut letters [ä], [ö], [ü] sound very different from [a], [o] and [u] and require practice.
2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'umlaut'
pair of dots ( ¨ ) placed over the vowels a, o, u in German to indicate a change in pronunciation. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.
3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.
Mistake: If a verb is 'strong', its past participle always has a vowel change. Correction: In German, a strong verb has a stem change in one or more tenses. Some strong verbs have a stem change in the present tense but not in the perfect tense, e.g., 'sehen' - 'er, sie, es sieht' - 'hat gesehen'.
More Lessons In This Unit
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