KS4 · German · Year 10
Neu in Deutschland: 'hatte', 'war', 'es gab', imperfect tense singular & plural
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IllumED Slides
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Your learning goal
I can use the perfect and imperfect tenses to understand the recent experiences of a young person arriving to live and study in Germany.
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Neu in Deutschland: 'hatte', 'war', 'es gab', imperfect tense singular & plural: 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 the perfect and imperfect tenses to understand the recent experiences of a young person arriving to live and study in Germany.
Key learning points
- Use the imperfect forms 'hatte', 'war', 'gab' to talk about the past instead of the perfect tense.
- Imperfect weak verbs are formed like 'lernen'.
- Imperfect strong verbs take the same endings as 'liegen'.
Words to know
- perfect tense
- German two-word past tense using either 'haben' or 'sein' with a past participle
- imperfect tense
- German single-word past tense, also called the simple past
Common mistakes
The imperfect tense is never used in spoken German.
The most common irregular verbs 'haben' and 'sein' are very common in speaking, along with 'es gab'. Other verbs in the imperfect mainly appear in written texts.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Learning Cycle 1 is suitable for both Foundation and Higher tiers. Learning Cycle 2 covers the imperfect tense of verbs at Higher tier.