The Individual: Talking About Yourself, Your World and Your Views
What this domain tests
Questions here ask you to describe your own life and opinions: family, friendships, school, free time, plans, values and feelings. The language you need is first-person present and perfect tense, plus modal verbs for wishes and obligations. Understand the difference between sein and haben as perfect-tense auxiliaries, the word order rule for subordinate clauses with weil, dass, obwohl and wenn, and the difference between mir and mich with verbs like gefallen, helfen and interessieren.
Concepts to master
- Present tense of regular, irregular and separable verbs (ich stehe früh auf).
- Perfect tense with haben or sein, including irregular participles (gegessen, gefahren, geblieben).
- Modal verbs and their position: Ich möchte später im Ausland studieren.
- Comparative and superlative for opinions: am wichtigsten, besser als.
- Connectors that change word order (deshalb, trotzdem, weil) versus those that do not (und, aber, oder).
Traps in questions
A common trap is a question asking for a reason, where students give a statement of fact only. If the prompt says Warum? or Begründen Sie, you must include a subordinate clause or deshalb. Another trap is the tense: a question about last weekend needs perfect tense, not present. Watch for questions asking about someone else (dein Bruder) where you must change the verb ending. Also beware of nicht versus kein: kein only negates nouns.
Worked example
Prompt: Was machst du in deiner Freizeit und warum? Weak answer: Ich spiele Fußball. Strong answer: In meiner Freizeit spiele ich zweimal pro Woche Fußball, weil ich dabei meine Freunde treffe und mich entspannen kann. Am wichtigsten ist mir jedoch Musik, denn ich höre jeden Tag Klavier. Note the inverted word order after the time expression, the weil clause with the verb at the end, and the mir with ist wichtig.
Rule of thumb
Answer the question, then add one detail and one reason. Three short, accurate sentences with correct word order score better than one long sentence with broken syntax.