Archive for 'Grammar'
Deutsche Modalverben – German modal verbs I: dürfen, können, möchten Posted by Sandra Rösner on Sep 2, 2011
Modal verbs modify an action or situation by expressing the ideas of permission, ability, obligation, necessity, etc. The six German modal verbs are: dürfen – may / to be allowed to können – can / to be able to möchten – to like to / to want to müssen – must / to have to…
The German prepositions “zu” and “nach” – “to” Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jul 15, 2011
Sometimes it can be very hard for learners of German to choose the correct preposition. This may be especially the case with the German prepositions “zu” and “nach”, which both mean “to” in English. Even some Germans have difficulties to distinguish “zu” and “nach” or use other prepositions when actually “zu” or “nach” are obligatory…
Tense: Present – Das Präsens Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jun 8, 2011
Learning tenses of a language can be a thorn in one’s side, but learning these rules is crucial to an effective study, since tenses display essential word orders, which enable you to handle a language more freely. There is only one present tense form in German and this one corresponds to all three forms that…
Audiovisual comprehension – Toms Fahrrad Posted by jan on May 29, 2011
Today I got a new audiovisual comprehension for you. I hope you´ll understand it. To help you a little bit, here´s the spoken text: Das ist Tom. Er hat ein neues Fahrrad bekommen. Die Reifen sind viel größer als die von seinem letzten Fahrrad. Und der Sattel ist viel höher. Das ist die Vorderbremse. Diese…
Internet terms – in German Posted by jan on Mar 27, 2011
Hi everybody! When Sandra Rösner asked for some new ideas and needs in her blog post „Think Tank“ a couple of days ago, some of you wanted to learn about „internet terms in German“. When I first read about this, I thought that this would be hard to answer. Because nearly everything that has to…
My Experience and Scientific Results about Second Language Learning Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 26, 2011
In this post I would like to tell you about eine Begegnung (an encounter) I had some weeks ago because this zufällige Begegnung (chance meeting) gave rise zwei Themen in einem Zug anzureißen (to touch on two topics in one go). Additionally, you have the opportunity to enlarge your vocabulary. One of the two topics…
Contraction of prepositions and definite articles in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 9, 2011
In German it often occurs that definite articles and prepositions are contracted. This is, however, only possible when the article is not stressed. The contracted form of the definite article is called clitic – an unstressed ‘word’ that only appears when it can lean on another word. Clitics do also, in other grammatical forms, exist…