Wie komme ich am besten ... ? Formal and informal imperatives
I can understand and use informal and formal imperatives for giving instructions, directions and advice.
Wie komme ich am besten ... ? Formal and informal imperatives
I can understand and use informal and formal imperatives for giving instructions, directions and advice.
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
- Imperative verbs are used to give instructions, directions, or advice.
- For the ‘du’ imperative of weak and strong verbs, remove the ‘-st’ and the 'du'. Omit umlauts added as a stem change.
- To use the 'ihr' form of the imperative of weak and strong verbs, just remove the pronoun 'ihr'.
- To use the formal 'Sie' form of the imperative, swap the position of the verb and subject pronoun 'Sie'.
- 'Sein' is irregular in the 'du' and 'Sie' forms of the imperative. Use 'sei', 'seid' and 'Seien Sie'.
Keywords
Imperative - a mood used to give instructions, directions or advice
Du - subject pronoun meaning ‘you’, informal and singular
Ihr - subject pronoun meaning ‘you’, informal and plural
Sie - subject pronoun meaning ‘you’, formal
Common misconception
Always leave out the subject pronoun when using the imperative.
The 'du' and 'ihr' forms of the imperative omit the subject pronoun, but the 'Sie' form retains it.
To help you plan your year 11 German lesson on: Wie komme ich am besten ... ? Formal and informal imperatives, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 11 German lesson on: Wie komme ich am besten ... ? Formal and informal imperatives, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 German lessons from the My neighbourhood: Mein Wohnort unit, dive into the full secondary German curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
Licence
Lesson video
Loading...
Some of our videos, including non-English language videos, do not have captions.
Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
offer
aeroplane
building
stadium
bag
goods
to call, calling
to lay, put
to set, place
to look, looking
to show, showing
to count, counting
Assessment exit quiz
5 Questions
your brother
your sisters
your neighbour