Entertainment: Grammar & Phonics (AQA GCSE German): Revision Note

• To talk about 'Entertainment' in German, there are three key areas of grammar to know:

  • using Lieblings- to talk about your favourite things

  • key verbs in the present, perfect and future tenses

  • opinion phrases to give your views on TV, music, films and reading

Lieblings-

• In German, you can add Lieblings- in front of almost any noun to mean favourite

• The gender of the compound word depends on the second noun, not on Lieblings-

• Mein changes to meine in the feminine and plural, just as it does with any other noun

Present tense

• These five verbs are essential for talking about entertainment

• Note the irregular forms in the present tense, particularly in the du and er / sie / es forms

• Fernsehen is a separable verb

• The prefix fern- splits off and goes to the end of the sentence:

  • Ich sehe jeden Abend fern. I watch TV every evening.

Perfect and future tense

• Use the perfect tense (haben + past participle) to say what you have watched, read or listened to

• Use the future tense (werden + infinitive) to say what you will watch, read or listen to

• The table below shows the ich form - the same pattern applies to all pronouns

• In the perfect tense, separable verbs like fernsehen keep the prefix attached to the past participle: ferngesehen, not gefernsehen

• The ge- is inserted between fern- and the stem

Opinion phrases

• Use these phrases to give your opinion about entertainment:

Entertainment: phonics

• Many words connected to entertainment are cognates - they look similar to English and are easy to recognise when reading

• However, they are not pronounced the same way as in English

• In the speaking exam, students often lose marks by pronouncing these words as if they were English

• Here are some examples:
  der Artikel
  die Kamera
  das Instrument
  die Literatur
  die Musik
  das Programm
  der Rock
  die Serie
  das Theater