Free-Time Activities: Vocabulary and the Perfect Tense
Learn German words for hobbies, sport and music, then use the perfect tense to say what you did in your free time.
Practise it before the paper, not after
Free, interactive practice on the words and structures the examiner keeps asking for.
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Free time in German
Free time covers hobbies, sport, games, music and films. This module starts with useful vocabulary, then moves into the perfect tense so you can say what you did.
Key free-time words
Learn German nouns with their capital letters and verbs in the infinitive.
Now or yesterday?
Compare a present-tense hobby with the perfect tense.
Match the hobby word
- das Buch
- der Film
- die Musik
- Fußball
- book
- film
- music
- football
Which is music?
Which German word means music?
- die Musik
- der Film
- das Buch
- das Spiel
The perfect tense
The perfect tense is one way to say what happened in the past. For many regular German verbs, use haben plus a past participle: ich habe gespielt. With movement verbs such as schwimmen, German often uses sein: ich bin geschwommen.
Match the past tense chunks
- ich habe gespielt
- ich habe gelesen
- ich habe getanzt
- ich bin geschwommen
- I played
- I read
- I danced
- I swam
Correct perfect tense
Select the TWO correct past-tense phrases.
- ich habe Fußball gespielt
- ich habe ein Buch gelesen
- ich gespielt habe Fußball
- ich habe Fußball spielen
Build a past sentence
Put the words in order to say: I played football.
- ich
- habe
- Fußball
- gespielt
Complete the hobby sentences
The German for book is _____. To say I played, write ich habe _____. To say I read, write ich habe _____. To say I swam, write ich _____ geschwommen.
Spot the free-time words
Tap the THREE words or phrases connected to free time.
- Schule
- Buch
- Fußball
- Prüfung
- Musik
Why not ich bin getanzt
A student knows that I swam is ich bin geschwommen, and writes ich bin getanzt for I danced. Why is that wrong?
- Dancing takes you nowhere, so tanzen uses haben: ich habe getanzt
- The participle is wrong, and with sein it should be ich bin getanzen
- Nothing is wrong, because dancing is a movement just like swimming
- Both verbs take haben, so ich bin geschwommen is the real mistake
Choose the tense
For each situation, choose the German sentence that fits.
- You usually play football.
- Yesterday, you read a book.
- Yesterday, you swam.
Your free time
Write two or three sentences in German about what you do in your free time and what you did recently.
- Use one present-tense hobby sentence
- Use one perfect-tense sentence with haben or sein
- Include at least one German free-time noun