VOCABULARY - AQA

The Future – talking about what will happen.
• The Future Tense describes what will happen or what someone will do at some point
in the future.
• To form it you use the verb werden just like you would use a modal verb (see p.126).
The infinitive of the verb you want to put into the future is sent to the end of the
clause.
• Here is the verb werden in full:
Ich werde in die Stadt gehen. I will go into town.
Du wirst viel lernen. You will learn a lot.
Er wird später kommen. He will come later.
Sie wird morgen da sein. She will be there tomorrow.
Es wird später regnen. It will rain later.
Wir werden früh ankommen. We will arrive early.
Werdet ihr auf uns warten? Will you wait for us?
Sie werden zu Hause bleiben. You will stay at home.
Sie werden nichts machen. They will not do anything.
• You can often avoid using the future tense by just using the present tense with a
suitable time word or phrase, such as ‘tomorrow’, or ‘next week’.
Morgen fahren wir nach Deutschland. Tomorrow we’re going to Germany.
Ich gehe später in die Stadt. I’m going into town later.
The conditional – talking about what would happen.
• To talk about what would happen (if something else happened), you need to use the
conditional tense. This is formed in exactly the same way as the future tense, except
that you use these forms of werden:
Ich würde in die Stadt gehen. I would go into town.
Du würdest viel lernen. You would learn a lot.
Er würde später kommen. He would come later.
Sie würde morgen da sein. She would be there tomorrow.
Es würde später regnen. It would rain later.
Wir würden früh ankommen. We would arrive early.
Würdet ihr auf uns warten? Would you wait for us?
Sie würden zu Hause bleiben. You would stay at home.
Sie würden nichts machen. They would not do anything.
The Past – talking about what has happened.
• There are two past tenses in German. We’ll look at the perfect tense first as it’s the
most common.
• The perfect tense describes what has happened or what someone has done. It is
made up of two parts, as in English:
The present tense of haben or sein + the past participle of the main verb.
Ich habe im Park Tennis gespielt. I have played tennis in the park.
• In English the verb to have can be left out (eg. I played tennis) but you can’t miss it
out in German.
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