KS4 · German · Year 11

Mein Schultag: perfect tense, conversation (Edexcel)

Studying and my future: Wiederholung Mein Leben, meine Zukunft

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IllumED Slides

IllumED · 1/11

Your learning goal

I can categorise vocabulary to aid mastery, use the German perfect tense and take part confidently in a conversation about my school life.

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Mein Schultag: perfect tense, conversation (Edexcel): 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.

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What you’ll learn

I can categorise vocabulary to aid mastery, use the German perfect tense and take part confidently in a conversation about my school life.

Key learning points

The perfect tense in German takes a present tense form of the auxiliary verb and a past participle.
Weak verb past participles sandwich the stem with 'ge-' and '-t'. Strong verbs use 'ge- and -'en'.
Put separable prefixes before the 'ge-', but there is no 'ge-' before inseparable prefixes or '-ieren' verbs.
Reflexive pronouns follow the auxiliary in WO1 and the subject in WO2. The German perfect has 2 English translations.
Use verb clauses in a conversation response, and extend answers with a different tense, subject, opinions and reasons.

Words to know

auxiliary verb: a form of 'haben' or 'sein' used to form the perfect tense
past participle: verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb
weak verb (perfect tense): verb whose past participle sandwiches the stem with 'ge-' and '-t'
strong verb (perfect tense): verb whose past participle sandwiches the stem with 'ge-' and ‘-en’ and often changes the stem vowel

Common mistakes

All German past participlies start with 'ge-'

Verbs starting with inseparable prefixes like 'be-', 'er-', 'ent-' and 'ver-' do not need 'ge'. Neither do verbs ending in '-ieren', e.g., 'interessiert'. Separable prefixes appear before 'ge-' in the perfect tense, e.g., 'aufgemacht', 'eingeführt'.

For parents, carers and teachers

Getting pupils to practise developing answers before tackling a conversation on a given theme is a step often missed out by students. If they do this regularly in class, including translating their ideas into German, it will build confidence for both speaking and translation skills.