Key learning points

1. Confidence in forming the perfect tense is important for communicating past events. Revisit key verbs often.
2. The perfect tense is more common in spoken German than the imperfect. Both can be used when writing in the past tense.
3. The imperfect tense forms ‘hatte’, ‘war’, and ‘es gab’ are often used in spoken as well as written German.
4. Learning imperfect tense endings, and the verb stems of strong verbs, will broaden your use of language in the past.
5. Being familiar with a range of past tense verb forms will support your comprehension of written and spoken German.

Keywords

• Perfect tense - past tense formed with the present tense of 'sein' or 'haben' and a past participle

• Past participle - verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb 'sein' or 'haben'

• Imperfect tense - single-word past tense used mainly to narrate past events in writing

Common misconception