KS3 · German · Year 9
Childhood experiences: nouns, past tense, conjunctions
Past lives: perfect and imperfect tenses
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/12
Your learning goal
I can recognise correspondences between German and English nouns and can use a range of familiar vocabulary with the past tense, to understand Germany's past and discuss my childhood.
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Childhood experiences: nouns, past tense, conjunctions: 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 recognise correspondences between German and English nouns and can use a range of familiar vocabulary with the past tense, to understand Germany's past and discuss my childhood.
Key learning points
- German nouns ending '-heit' often correspond to English nouns ending '-ity', '-ness', e.g., 'die Sicherheit' (security).
- After WW2, Germany was split into West and East Germany. Life was very different in each country.
- Use the perfect tense and shorter imperfect tense forms 'war', 'waren', 'es gab', 'hatte' to narrate past events.
- The conjunctions 'als' or 'bevor' trigger word order three and can be used at the start of a sentence.
- If 'als' or 'bevor' begin a clause, the following clause uses word order two, creating a verb-comma-verb pattern.
Words to know
- war
- imperfect tense form meaning 'was'
- waren
- imperfect tense form meaning 'were'
- es gab
- imperfect tense form meaning 'there was | there were'
- hatte
- imperfect tense form meaning 'had'
- word order three
- after certain conjunctions, the verb is sent to the end of the sentence or clause
Common mistakes
There aren't any patterns in German nouns that help you identify their grammatical gender.
There are some suffixes in German nouns that signal the noun is feminine, for example '-heit', '-ung', '-in'. There may be some exceptions!
For parents, carers and teachers
- For extra challenge in Task C3, encourage students to use the perfect tense after sentences beginning with 'als' or 'bevor'.