GERMAN IRREGULAR VERBS CONJUGATION PRACTICE #1

KS3 GERMAN KS4 GERMAN GCSE GERMAN CONJUGATION PRACTICE 3 workbooks @ £1.20 each in the bundle featuring 25 high-frequency irregular German verbs in the present, perfect and imperfect tenses, 150 conjugations in each workbook, 450 conjugations in total, answer keys and verb lists ideal for advanced KS3 German students who are beginning to work with compound sentences and longer texts, and KS4 German students who are working with more complex language and texts, including a range of tenses.

My students really like this kind of grammar activity, as they like to work and learn independently, which is a successful way of varying teaching and learning methodologies - I’ve found it’s really important to avoid predominantly teacher-led learning in the languages classroom.

The workbooks focus on the correct conjugation of verbs, rather than usage, but I definitely find it useful to remind students of a number of things when focusing on or revising tense and verb conjugation. For example, with the German present tense, I encourage students to look for patterns across all the verbs, such as the singular pronouns, including the pronoun man form being identical, pointing out also that man is commonly used in German, often also meaning we, unlike the pronoun one in English.

Students do often try to conflate what they know about conjugation, and with those whose first language is English, I frequently see attempts such as ich bin gehen for I am going or similarly ich mache gehen for I do go. I refer frequently the difference in usage between English and German, and this is important particularly when explaining when and in which contexts to use the simple present and the continuous / progressive present tense.

Though the workbooks focus solely on the correct conjugation of verbs, and does not look at word order in the context of full sentences, there are fixed conjugation patterns that students can learn, recognize and apply, ensuring that their spoken and written German is accurate, and that their understanding of German across the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing is robust. Students become very familiar and confident the more they work with conjugation, and these quick conjugations certainly help to embed that successfully.

I’ve used these ‘quick conjugations’ for many years with my German classes. My students definitely find them to be a great way of practising, reinforcing and revising how to conjugate essential verbs in German. I use them in a range of contexts such as independent work either in class time or for homework, holiday refresher work, or individual activities for cover lessons. I tend to give my students regular opportunities to practice the conjugations during the whole schools year, and they find this really useful for mapping their own progress and developing their overall understanding of how German conjugation ‘works’.

The tenses are

present tense (Präsens)
perfect tense (Perfekt)
imperfect tense (Präteritum)

Each set has the following structure:

Two alphabetical verb reference lists: German-English and English-German.

Three conjugation challenges, each with 50 individual conjugations:

Conjugation Challenge 1: each verb conjugated in German across a range of pronouns, with students writing the corresponding English verb conjugation.

Conjugation Challenge 2: gives the infinitive of each verb in German, specifying the target pronoun. Students write the corresponding verb conjugation in German.

Conjugation Challenge 3: students write the corresponding German verb conjugation, and its infinitive, from an English prompt.

Notes and Next Steps sheet, which encourages students to think about how their understanding of German conjugation works, what progress they have made, what their targets for improvement might realistically be, and what they might reasonably do in order to meet those targets. Students also note down any new verbs they discover, which enables them to build up a really sound verb vocabulary bank. We also use this to guide our whole-group discussions about conjugation and German grammar, and learning and progress in general - this is a really successful and popular activity.

answer key: there are 6 pages in the answer key book - for me, answer keys are an essential and integral part of learning with these kinds of workbooks - they give my students an additional opportunity to engage with language, they certainly help them develop more independence in their learning, and they genuinely enjoy ‘correcting’ their own, and especially each other’s work.

Currently in my store I have quick conjugation workbooks for a range of verb groups featuring the following tenses:

present tense (Präsens)
perfect tense (Perfekt)
imperfect tense (Präteritum)
future tense (Futur I)
conditional tense (Konjuktiv II, Futur I)
pluperfect tense (Plusquamperfekt)
future perfect tense (Konjuktiv I, Futur II)
conditional perfect tense (Konjuktiv II, Plusquamperfekt)

Have a browse in my store for more German conjugation and grammar activities, and a wide range of other German teaching and learning resources, with special offer bundles and lots of freebies too - I’ve included a couple here for you to try.

Files are non-editable in a zipped format. The bundle is copyright, all rights reserved. It may not be copied, rewritten, shared or distributed outside your own classroom, in whole or in part, in any way. The license for purchase is a single-user license only. Please read the Terms of Use carefully.

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