KS4 · German · Year 11
Deutsche Geschichte: imperfect tense, perfect tense
Communication and the world around us: Geschichte
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I can apply a checklist of knowledge to support my use of the perfect and imperfect tenses, and can apply this when reading and writing in German.
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Deutsche Geschichte: imperfect tense, perfect tense: 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 apply a checklist of knowledge to support my use of the perfect and imperfect tenses, and can apply this when reading and writing in German.
Key learning points
- Confidence in forming the perfect tense is important for communicating past events. Revisit key verbs often.
- The perfect tense is more common in spoken German than the imperfect. Both can be used when writing in the past tense.
- The imperfect tense forms ‘hatte’, ‘war’, and ‘es gab’ are often used in spoken as well as written German.
- Learning imperfect tense endings, and the verb stems of strong verbs, will broaden your use of language in the past.
- Being familiar with a range of past tense verb forms will support your comprehension of written and spoken German.
Words to know
- perfect tense
- past tense formed with the present tense of 'sein' or 'haben' and a past participle
- past participle
- verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb 'sein' or 'haben'
- imperfect tense
- single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing
Common mistakes
Always use the imperfect tense to translate the English simple past, e.g., 'I chatted online.'
The perfect tense is far more common in German, used for past events in speaking and informal writing. The imperfect is used mainly to narrate past events in more formal writing. However, 'hatte', 'war' and 'es gab' are used in speaking too.
For parents, carers and teachers
- LC2 contains mostly Higher-tier grammar. Foundation-tier students should be familiar with 'hatte', 'gab' and 'war'. There is an uninterrupted version of the Task A1 audio for use with Higher-tier students. Task B1 Option 1 is Higher tier, Option 2 is Foundation tier.