KS4 · German · Year 11
Deutsche Städte: comparative adjectives
My neighbourhood: Mein Wohnort
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use comparative adjectives to draw comparisons between places and to enhance descriptions.
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Deutsche Städte: comparative adjectives: 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 comparative adjectives to draw comparisons between places and to enhance descriptions.
Key learning points
- Turn an adjective into a comparative adjective by adding '-er', e.g., 'schneller'.
- To say 'than' when making a comparison, use 'als', e.g., 'meine Stadt ist größer als dein Dorf'.
- Some adjectives also gain an umlaut in the comparative form, e.g., 'jünger'.
- Adjectives ending -el or -er remove the penultimate ‘e’, e.g., 'teurer', 'dunkler'.
- Comparatives can be useful for developing opinions, reasons and ideas when writing descriptions.
Words to know
- comparative
- a form of adjective or adverb used to compare people, places, things or ideas
Common mistakes
German forms comparatives in the same way as English.
To form the comparative in German, add '-er' to the adjective. This applies in English, but only for short adjectives. For longer adjectives, we add 'more' before the adjective. This is never the case in German.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Following on from Tasks B1a and B1b about Rothenburg, students might like to research another German town and compare it with their own home town. This could also feed into their written response to Task C1.