Section Warm-Up
When Germans speak about past events, they usually use the present perfect tense (das Perfekt). In this section, we will learn another form that is preferred in writing. But let’s review the present perfect tense first.
The present perfect tense is a compound tense that gets its name from the fact that it combines two verb forms (making a compound) to express an action or condition in the past. The present is the present tense of the helping verb (haben or sein) that is combined with the past participle of the verb being used to form the Perfekt. For example, to say “I worked on the computer” in German, you would say: “Ich habe am Computer gearbeitet.”
Can you put these sentences in the present perfect? Click each sentence to see the answer.
| Ich mache Hausaufgaben. | |
| Er isst Pizza zum Mittagessen. | |
| Die Kinder trinken Milch. | |
| Wir fahren in Urlaub. | |
| Du arbeitest zu viel. | |
| Geht ihr zu Fuß? |
