KS4 · German · Year 10
Junge Deutsche: neuter adjectival nouns, nominalisation, adjectival agreement
Studying and my future: Aufwachsen, Altersgrenzen und Zukunftspläne
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I can use neuter adjectival nouns with 'etwas' and 'alles', and verbs as nouns, to extend my understanding of career options for young Germans.
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Junge Deutsche: neuter adjectival nouns, nominalisation, adjectival agreement: 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 neuter adjectival nouns with 'etwas' and 'alles', and verbs as nouns, to extend my understanding of career options for young Germans.
Key learning points
- Following 'etwas', capitalise an adjective and add '-es' to turn it to a neuter adjectival noun.
- Following 'alles', capitalise an adjective and add '-e' to turn it to a neuter adjectival noun.
- German verbs can be nominalised as neuter nouns, and used with or without 'das'.
- Adjectives change spelling depending on case and gender.
Words to know
- adjectival noun
- a type of noun that takes the same endings as adjectives
- etwas
- indefinite pronoun meaning ‘something’, often followed by a neuter adjectival noun
- alles
- indefinite pronoun meaning ‘everything’, often followed by a neuter adjectival noun
- nominalisation
- turning verbs into nouns
Common mistakes
When an adjective follows 'ein', always add 'en'.
Adjective endings reflect the case and gender of the word they refer to. Dative case adjectives end in -en. In nominative and accusative, use -e for feminine and -es for neuter. Masculine -er and -en match (d)er (nominative) and (d)en (accusative).
For parents, carers and teachers
- Encourage students to recognise nominalised verbs and to translate them into English using '-ing', e.g., das Lernen - learning. Also encourage the use of 'etwas' and 'alles' with neuter adjectival nouns for greater variety and confidence in writing and speaking.