Year 9 - German
Fairy tales and poetry: da- and wo- compounds, imperfect
Storytelling: imperfect tense
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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 introduces the imperfect (simple past) tense of regular and highly frequent irregular verbs in singular persons.Da- compounds are revisited along with the perfect tense and the historic present in the narration of a story.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to use wo- and da-compounds to ask and answer questions about fairy tale events.
Key Notes
- Use the imperfect tense in German to narrative past events, mainly in writing.
- Infer the likely meaning of an unfamiliar word by knowing surrounding words and by the structure of the word itself.
- Da-compounds are used to replace and refer back to inanimate (non-living) nouns which have already been mentioned.
- Use wo-compounds to ask questions with prepositions, putting wo- at the start of the question before the preposition.
- Use dar- and wor- for da- and wo-compounds for prepositions starting with a vowel.
Vocabulary To Learn
- imperfect: German single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing; e.g., 'war', 'hatte', 'gab', 'fand'
- infer: work out the likely meaning of an unfamiliar word based on knowledge of the surrounding words in the text and the structure of the word itself
- da-, dar- (compound): prefix added to prepositions to avoid repetition of the noun
- wo-, wor- (compound): prefix added to prepositions to form questions
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Form questions with prepositions in the same way as in English, by adding a preposition at the end, e.g., 'What does he find out about?'.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain what you can now say or understand in this lesson.
Use the imperfect tense in German to narrative past events, mainly in writing. Infer the likely meaning of an unfamiliar word by knowing surrounding words and by the structure of the word itself.
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; e.g., '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: Form questions with prepositions in the same way as in English, by adding a preposition at the end, e.g., 'What does he find out about?'. Correction: German doesn't leave prepositions hanging at the end of questions like in English. Form questions by placing the prefix 'wo-' or 'wor-' before the preposition at the start of the question.
More Lessons In This Unit
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