New
New
Year 8

A new home and new neighbours: word patterns and word order

I can use a growing vocabulary to talk about a new home and new neighbours, varying word order to emphasise specific ideas in my responses to questions.

New
New
Year 8

A new home and new neighbours: word patterns and word order

I can use a growing vocabulary to talk about a new home and new neighbours, varying word order to emphasise specific ideas in my responses to questions.

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

Lesson details

Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons

Key learning points

  1. Knowing key word patterns helps us understand words more quickly and recall them more easily.
  2. Add 'Haupt-' to nouns to mean 'main'. The created noun has the gender of its base noun: 'die Idee' - 'die Hauptidee'.
  3. 'Wo' is the question word 'where'; it asks where something is located and is answered in the dative case.
  4. 'Wohin' is the question word 'where to'; it asks where something is going and is answered in the accusative case.
  5. Start German sentences with any element (e.g., object, adverb) to emphasise it. The verb stays in 2nd place.

Keywords

  • Haupt- - prefix added to nouns to mean 'main', e.g., 'Hauptidee' - 'main idea'

  • Wo - question word asking where something is located and answered in the dative case

  • Wohin - question word asking where something is going and answered in the accusative case

  • Word order two (WO2) - inverts the subject and verb in a sentence by starting the sentence with an element other than the subject

Common misconception

German word order is just like English - it's always subject-verb-object.

In English, word order is usually fixed: subject-verb-object, e.g., 'she eats an apple'. In German, the word order is more flexible because in main clauses the verb must be in second position. Any element can start a German sentence for emphasis.


To help you plan your year 8 German lesson on: A new home and new neighbours: word patterns and word order, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Task C2 can be extended into pairwork, whereby pupils work from the 'Mehrfamilienhäuser' text from Task C1 to ask and answer questions - the 'asker' targetting a specific element and the 'respondent' starting their answer with that detail and using word order two (inversion).
Teacher tip

Equipment

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

Loading...

Some of our videos, including non-English language videos, do not have captions.

Prior knowledge starter quiz

Download quiz pdf

6 Questions

Q1.
'Das Bild hängt __________ Wand.' Choose the correct missing words.

an die
Correct answer: an der
auf die
auf der

Q2.
Match the German and English.

Correct Answer:Angriff (m),attack

attack

Correct Answer:Arzt (m),doctor

doctor

Correct Answer:Gesetz (nt),law

law

Correct Answer:Milliarde (f),billion

billion

Correct Answer:Million (f),million

million

Correct Answer:Unternehmen (nt),company, enterprise

company, enterprise

Q3.
Match the German and English.

Correct Answer:besser,better

better

Correct Answer:billig,cheap

cheap

Correct Answer:gefährlich,dangerous

dangerous

Correct Answer:häufig,often

often

Correct Answer:lang,long

long

Correct Answer:sicher,safe

safe

Q4.
Order the words to say: 'We earned more than twenty euros.'

1 - wir
2 - haben
3 - mehr
4 - als
5 - zwanzig
6 - Euro
7 - verdient

Q5.
Write in English: 'ich schütze meine Daten'.

Correct Answer: I protect my data, I am protecting my data, I'm protecting my data

Q6.
Write in German: 'the table was expensive'.

Correct Answer: der Tisch war teuer

Assessment exit quiz

Download quiz pdf

4 Questions

Q1.
Write in German: 'multi-family house'.

Correct Answer: Mehrfamilienhaus, das Mehrfamilienhaus, ein Mehrfamilienhaus

Q2.
Write in German: 'the main reason'.

Correct Answer: der Hauptgrund

Q3.
Which question would elicit the answer 'Sie sind auf dem Boden.'?

Wohin kommen die Schuhe?
Wohin kommt die Zeitung?
Correct answer: Wo liegen die Briefe?
Wo liegt die Jacke?
Wo ist die Katze?

Q4.
Order the words to form a sentence, emphasising the place.

1 - in
2 - meinem
3 - Zimmer
4 - spiele
5 - ich
6 - am
7 - Computer

Additional material

Download additional material