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Year 8 - German

What you did when on Sylt: perfect tense, telling the time: half past the hour

Past events: perfect and imperfect tenses, adjective agreement and comparatives

Unit Summary

This unit revisits the perfect and imperfect tenses, as well as word order 1 and 3. Pupils also revisit numbers and dates, including ordinal numbers and practise telling the time more precisely as they describe and narrate past events.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to talk about what happened in the past and give the time it happened using 'halb' to mean half past.

Key Notes

  • [y] commonly sounds like [ü], e.g., 'typisch'. In English words like 'Yoga' and 'Baby', [y] is pronounced as in English.
  • Words ending in -ic/-ical in English often end in -isch in German, e.g., 'typisch'.
  • There are three different ways to say 'you' in German: 'du', 'Sie' and 'man'.
  • The perfect tense is made up of a part of 'haben' or 'sein' in the present tense, and a past participle.
  • Half past the hour is expressed as half to the next hour in German, e.g., 9:30 is 'halb zehn'.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • [y]: pronounced as in 'typisch'
  • perfect tense: a verb tense that describes completed actions in the past, e.g., 'I said', 'she played'

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • Giving the time as half past the hour works the same in German as it does in English, e.g., 'halb neun' is 'half past nine'.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

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

[y] commonly sounds like [ü], e.g., 'typisch'. In English words like 'Yoga' and 'Baby', [y] is pronounced as in English. Words ending in -ic/-ical in English often end in -isch in German, e.g., 'typisch'.

2. Define this key language word and use it in context. '[y]'

pronounced as in 'typisch'. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.

3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.

Mistake: Giving the time as half past the hour works the same in German as it does in English, e.g., 'halb neun' is 'half past nine'. Correction: In German, half past is expressed as half of the next hour, so 'half past nine' is 'halb zehn', or 'half way to ten', the next hour.

More Lessons In This Unit

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