KS3 · German · Year 9
Past and future goals: revisiting tenses and word order, translation skills
Past ambitions and future goals: past, present and word order
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/11
Your learning goal
I can understand and translate texts on past achievements and future goals, applying knowledge of perfect and present tenses, present and imperfect modals, and word order.
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Past and future goals: revisiting tenses and word order, translation skills: 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 understand and translate texts on past achievements and future goals, applying knowledge of perfect and present tenses, present and imperfect modals, and word order.
Key learning points
- Frequent reading aloud and transcription can aid fluency in both speaking and comprehension.
- When discussing past goals, use the perfect for most verbs, but the imperfect for modals.
- For future goals, the present tense can be used to express future intentions, with a future time phrase.
- The word 'als' can mean 'when' in the past tense, 'as a' (role), or 'than' in comparisons.
- Translation into and from German requires attention to vocabulary, tenses, word order, accuracy, and careful checking.
Words to know
- Sound-symbol correspondence
- (SSC) relationship between letters and their sounds
- word order one (WO1)
- subject - verb - object - the standard word order in a German sentence, e.g., 'ich lerne Deutsch'
- word order two (WO2)
- inverts the subject and verb in a sentence
- word order three (WO3)
- after certain conjunctions, the verb is sent to the end of the sentence or clause
Common mistakes
To talk about the future in German you have to use the future tense with 'werden'.
In German, you can use the present tense and a future time phrase to talk about the future: 'ich spiele nächste Woche Tennis' - 'I'm playing/going to play tennis next week'. 'Planen' and 'vorhaben' in the present tense also express future intentions.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Translation tasks in Learning Cycle 3 are suggested as pair-work activities for collaborative working in developing translation skills. The tasks could also be adapted or scaffolded further as required.