German Grammar and Vocabulary in Context
What the domain tests
This domain tests explicit control of German structures and vocabulary: case and gender, article and adjective endings, verb conjugation and tense, word order, mood, prepositions, derivation, and collocations. Items often ask you to choose the form that fits a sentence or to identify the error.
Core rules
- Four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive. Learn article endings as a grid: der/die/das/den/dem/des.
- Two-way prepositions (in, an, auf, über, unter, vor, hinter, neben, zwischen) take accusative for motion or direction and dative for location.
- Word order: verb-second in main clauses; verb-final in subordinate clauses introduced by weil, dass, obwohl, wenn; inverted subject after a fronted element.
- Perfect tense: haben with most verbs; sein with intransitive motion or change-of-state verbs (gehen, fahren, kommen, werden, bleiben) and sein itself.
- Konjunktiv II for hypotheticals and polite requests: Ich würde…, Könnten Sie…?
- Adjective endings depend on article type (definite, indefinite, zero).
Worked example
Choose: Ich ___ gestern nach Berlin gefahren. Options: habe / bin / war. Reasoning: fahren here expresses movement from one place to another with no direct object, so the perfect tense uses sein: Ich bin gestern nach Berlin gefahren. War is simple past of sein and would need a predicate, not a past participle.
Traps
- English interference: seit + present tense (Ich wohne seit 2020 hier), not past.
- Dative verbs: helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören take dative objects.
- nach with cities and countries without articles; zu with people and institutions.
- Missing noun capitalization-every German noun is capitalized.
- Separable prefixes: Ich rufe dich morgen an, but Ich habe dich gestern angerufen.