The Perfect Tense - Talking about the Past

You use the perfect tense to talk about things which have happened in the past. For example:

Yesterday I ate an ice cream.

To use the perfect tense correctly you need:

•  a form of "haben" (e.g. Ich habe) or "sein" (e.g. Ich bin)

•  the past participle of the verb which carries the meaning of what went on in the past.

The form of "haben" or "sein" will be the second idea in statement sentences and the past participle goes to the end of the phrase.

Let's illustrate this with our ice cream example from above:

Don't worry, if you don't undertsand what is going on yet. The following exercises will give you step by step instructions so that by the end of this unit you will be able to write simple sentences in the past.

Hier geht's zu Activity 1...

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