Practice hub
German has two everyday past tenses, and learners often mix them up. These free games and clear explanations help you build the right Perfekt forms (ich habe gemacht / ich bin gegangen) and recognise Präteritum (ich machte) when reading or listening.
Perfekt is the spoken past tense — Germans use it for almost everything in conversation. It's a two-part form: an auxiliary (haben or sein) plus the past participle (ge-mach-t, ge-gang-en). Most verbs take haben; verbs of motion or change of state (gehen, kommen, fahren, werden, sterben, bleiben) take sein.
Präteritum (the simple past — ich machte, ich ging) is mostly the written past tense, used in books, news, and formal writing. The exception: a small set of high-frequency verbs (sein, haben, werden, modal verbs like können, müssen, wollen) are commonly used in Präteritum even in speech (ich war, ich hatte, ich konnte).
Building the Perfekt right is more important than memorising every Präteritum form, because Perfekt is what you'll use when speaking. Drilling participle forms — especially the irregular ones — is one of the highest-leverage things you can do at A2/B1.
Perfekt (ich habe gemacht / ich bin gegangen) is what Germans use in everyday speech. Präteritum (ich machte / ich ging) is mostly written — books, news, formal writing. The exceptions are sein, haben, werden, and the modal verbs, which use Präteritum even in conversation (ich war, ich hatte, ich konnte).
Most verbs take haben. Use sein with: verbs of motion or direction (gehen, kommen, fahren, fliegen, laufen, reisen), verbs of change of state (werden, sterben, einschlafen, aufwachen), and the verbs sein and bleiben themselves. Everything else takes haben.
Drill them in small batches by pattern. Regular weak verbs follow ge- + stem + -t (machen → gemacht). Strong verbs change the vowel and end in -en (singen → gesungen). Mixed verbs combine both (denken → gedacht). High-volume reps under time pressure beat memorising lists every time.