KS3 · German · Year 8

Opinions and reasons: 'weil' vs 'denn', word order after 'weil'

Who am I? Adjective agreement, 'weil' and 'denn'

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Your learning goal

I can ask open or closed questions to find out what someone likes or doesn't like and why.

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Opinions and reasons: 'weil' vs 'denn', word order after 'weil': 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

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What you’ll learn

I can ask open or closed questions to find out what someone likes or doesn't like and why.

Key learning points

'Viel' means 'lots of' and is used with uncountable nouns like 'love' or 'time'. 'Viele' means 'many' with plural nouns.
'Weil' and 'denn' both mean 'because'. Both are conjunctions and connect clauses or sentences.
Add 'un-' to make some German adjectives negative, like the English 'un-' or 'im-'.
Open or information questions start with a wh- word and have more information in the answer than yes/no.

Words to know

viel, viele: a lot, many
weil: conjunction meaning 'because' followed by word order 3 (WO3)
open question: question starting with a wh- word that has more information in the answer than yes/no
warum?: why?

Common mistakes

‘Viel’ is pronounced like ‘vile’ in English.

‘Weil’ in German sounds similar to ‘vile’ in English. However, ‘viel’ contains [v] which sounds like English ‘f’ and [ie] which is like English double ‘ee’.

For parents, carers and teachers

Once pupils know the verb ‘mögen’, question word ‘warum’, conjunctions ‘weil’ and ‘denn’, and how to ask closed and open questions, teachers can turn ‘transition’ moments in class time into opportunities to elicit opinions and reasons spontaneously.