KS4 · German · Year 11
Die Vennbahn: perfect tense, imperfect tense, weak past participles
Travel and tourism: Kulturszene
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/11
Your learning goal
I can use adverbs to give and respond to detailed responses in the past tense, form past participles of a range of weak verbs, and apply this knowledge when translating into German.
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Die Vennbahn: perfect tense, imperfect tense, weak past participles: 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 adverbs to give and respond to detailed responses in the past tense, form past participles of a range of weak verbs, and apply this knowledge when translating into German.
Key learning points
- Use 'gern', 'lieber' and 'früher' with a past tense to mean 'liked', 'rather', 'in the past, used to'.
- Weak verbs form their past participles by sandwiching the verb stem with 'ge-' and '-t', e.g., 'gespielt'.
- Verbs with separable prefixes add 'ge-' after the separable prefix, e.g., 'aufgemacht'.
- Verbs with inseparable prefixes do not add 'ge-' to form their past participle, e.g., 'erlebt'.
- Verbs ending '-ieren' do not add 'ge-' to form the past participle. They add the suffix '-iert', e.g., 'ausprobiert'.
Words to know
- gern
- adverb meaning ‘gladly, liked to’ with the past tense
- lieber
- comparative adverb meaning ‘more gladly, rather’
- früher
- adverb meaning ‘previously, in former times, in the past'
- past participle
- verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb 'haben' or 'sein'
Common mistakes
'Lieber' means 'love'.
It is easy to confuse the words 'Liebe', 'liebe' and 'lieber', particularly in spoken German. Pay careful attention to pronunciation and listen out for [er]. 'Liebe' is a noun (love), 'liebe' is a verb (love) and 'lieber' is an adverb (more gladly).
For parents, carers and teachers
- Using the imperfect tense with 'früher', 'gern' and 'lieber' is Higher Tier grammar. Foundation Tier students are expected to use these adverbs with the perfect tense and 'war', 'hatte', 'es gab'. Tasks in LC3 are Option 1 (Higher Tier), Option 2 (Foundation Tier).