Intermediate
397 self-paced lessons: Konjunktiv II and wenn-clauses, the Plusquamperfekt, relative and infinitive clauses, the passive, verbs with prepositions, the genitive, spoken German and real situations at the bank, the office and home.
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Short stories · graded reading practice with audio and English
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The Past Tenses Together, Part 1 of 2
Bring the Elementary pasts back side by side: the Perfekt for telling what happened, and war, hatte and the modals for what it was like.
Pattern Practice: Haben or Sein?
Drill the Perfekt auxiliary until it's automatic: sein for movement and change, haben for everything else, and the traps in between.
Circuit: Strong Participles
Rotate the high-frequency strong and mixed participles by vowel pattern so they come out without thinking.
Talk About You: Warst du schon mal...?
Ask and answer about life experiences with schon mal, noch nie and noch nicht.
Minimal Pairs: Er hat / Er hatte, Er ist / Er war
Hear and say the tiny contrasts that carry tense in fast speech: hat / hatte, ist / war, kann / konnte, müssen / mussten.
The Past Tenses Together, Part 2 of 2
The strong verbs people really do use in the spoken Präteritum: es gab, ich kam, ich ging, ich stand, ich wusste, ich dachte.
Dialogue Lab: Wie war dein Wochenende?
Monday morning at work: ask about the weekend, tell what happened, react and link your story with zuerst, dann, danach.
Seit, Vor, Schon and Erst
Say how long something has been going on, how long ago it happened, and whether that's more or less than expected.
Contrast Clinic: Seit, Vor or Für?
English 'for' has three German translations: seit for what's still going on, lang for a finished stretch, and für for a planned period.
Error Hunt: Past-Tense Slips
Find and fix the past-tense mistakes English speakers make most: wrong auxiliary, participle in the wrong place, für for seit and broken verb-second.
Fix the Paragraph: Eine Urlaubsmail
Rewrite a holiday email full of wrong auxiliaries, invented participles and seit/vor slips, sentence by sentence.
Quick Round: Schon / Noch nicht / Noch nie
Rapid answers with ja schon, noch nicht and noch nie, and doch to contradict a negative question.
Fill the Story: Was für ein Tag!
A disastrous day told in gaps: choose haben or sein, war or hatte, es gab, and keep the verb second after every time marker.
Transformation Chain: From Present to Past
Retell a present-tense story in the past step by step: choose the auxiliary, move the participle, keep sein, haben and the modals in the Präteritum.
Unit 1 review: The Past Tenses Together
Listen, speak and write with what you learned in this unit (The Past Tenses Together), then take a short unit quiz.
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