KS4 · German · Year 10
Berufserfahrung: 'Sie', 'Ihnen', interrogatives 'wer', 'wen', 'wem'
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use 'Sie' and 'Ihnen' to address other people politely in the context of enquiring about work experience.
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Berufserfahrung: 'Sie', 'Ihnen', interrogatives 'wer', 'wen', 'wem': slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can use 'Sie' and 'Ihnen' to address other people politely in the context of enquiring about work experience.
Key learning points
- 'Sie' is the polite way of saying 'you' and is a subject pronoun.
- The direct object pronoun for 'Sie' is also 'Sie'. The indirect object pronoun is 'Ihnen'.
- The interrogative pronoun 'wer' becomes 'wen' in the accusative.
- The interrogative pronoun 'wer' becomes 'wem' in the dative.
Words to know
- wer, wen, wem
- question word meaning ‘who’ or ‘whom’ which changes according to case
- object pronoun
- word which replaces the object of a verb; it is the accusative for a direct object, e.g., ‘Sie’ (you formal) or dative for an indirect object, e.g., 'Ihnen'
Common mistakes
Use 'wer' in German whenever you want to say 'who'.
There are 3 different forms of 'who' in German, which should be used correctly to match the case required in each sentence. There are different forms in English (who, whom), but we don't often use 'whom'. The rules in German are stricter.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Encourage pupils to have simple example questions on hand to demonstrate 'wer', 'wen' and 'wem'. And to build confidence with 'Sie' and 'Ihnen', encourage students to convert simple sentences from informal to formal, e.g., 'ich danke dir' - 'ich danke Ihnen', 'du erzählst mir' - 'Sie erzählen mir'.