A2.1 · 24 of 28
Schreiben: Eine E-Mail an einen Freund
Lesson · 3 rules · about 5 min
Tell a friend about your weekend in German, and have your own AI correct it.
- 1A whole message in the Perfekt
- 2sein for going, haben for the rest
- 3Order the weekend with zuerst, dann, danach
Why this matters
You have drilled the Perfekt gap by gap; now you write a whole e-mail with it. You write the message here in the box, and the app builds a correction request that carries your own text. You paste that into your own AI, it corrects what you actually wrote, and you bring the score back. The fixes are saved as your next things to work on. Aim for 200 to 500 characters, about the length of a real message to a friend. The one thing that will cost you marks is slipping into the present tense halfway through, so check every verb before you send it.
Rule · 1 of 3
A whole message in the Perfekt
When you tell someone what you did, German uses the Perfekt almost everywhere: haben or sein in second position, the Partizip II at the very end. Keep it up for the whole message. One present-tense sentence in the middle makes the reader think you have moved back to today.
- Am Samstag habe ich meine Schwester besucht. On Saturday I visited my sister.
- Wir sind zusammen in die Stadt gefahren und haben einen Film gesehen. We went into town together and watched a film.
The participle goes last, after everything else: „Ich habe am Sonntag lange geschlafen“, not „Ich habe geschlafen am Sonntag“.
Quick check
Ich am Samstag Fußball gespielt.
Rule · 2 of 3
sein for going, haben for the rest
Verbs of going and coming take sein: ich bin gefahren, gegangen, geflogen, gekommen, geblieben. Almost everything else takes haben. If you can picture yourself moving from one place to another, reach for bin.
- Ich bin am Freitag nach Hamburg gefahren. I travelled to Hamburg on Friday.
- Wir sind lange im Café geblieben und haben viel geredet. We stayed in the cafe for a long time and talked a lot.
bleiben takes sein although nobody moves anywhere: ich bin geblieben.
Quick check
Wir am Sonntag ins Kino gegangen.
Memory trick · 3 of 3
Order the weekend with zuerst, dann, danach
A message about your weekend is easier to read, and easier to write, if you walk through it in order. Zuerst … dann … danach … am Abend. Each of those can start the sentence, and when it does, the verb follows it straight away.
- Zuerst haben wir gefrühstückt, dann sind wir an den See gefahren. First we had breakfast, then we drove to the lake.
- Danach war ich sehr müde, aber es hat Spaß gemacht. Afterwards I was very tired, but it was fun.
Quick check
Dann wir nach Hause gefahren.
Listen
Play it, then pick what you heard.
Spot the mistake
Which one is right?
Spot the mistake
Which one is right?
Spot the mistake
Which one is right?
Spot the mistake
Which one is right?
Cheat sheet
What to take with you
- A whole message in the Perfekt
- sein for going, haben for the rest
- Order the weekend with zuerst, dann, danach
How to remember it
- Perfekt all the way through: haben or sein in second place, Partizip II at the end.
- sein for going and coming (gefahren, gegangen, geblieben); haben for the rest.
- war and hatte stay simple: Es war schön, Ich hatte keine Zeit.
- Informal frame: Hallo Max, … then Liebe Grüße and your name.
A short e-mail about what you did is one of the written tasks the A2 certificate sets, and the message you will actually send most often.
Write an e-mail to a German friend about last weekend: where you went, who you were with, what you did and what you thought of it. Finish by asking your friend one question about their weekend.
- an informal greeting (Hallo / Liebe / Lieber) and an informal sign-off
- tell it in the Perfekt: ich habe … gemacht, ich bin … gefahren
- use sein for going and coming (ich bin gefahren, wir sind gegangen) and haben for the rest
- say when, with at least two time expressions (am Samstag, am Nachmittag, danach)
- say what you thought of it, with one opinion sentence
- end with one question to your friend
0 of 200 characters — keep going 0 words
2 Copy the correction request
This carries your own text. Paste it into your AI assistant and it will correct what you wrote, then give you a score and a short list of fixes.
3 Open your assistant
Copy the request first (one step back), then paste it into your assistant.
4 Bring the correction back
Paste the whole report. The SCORE= line is read
automatically, and the fixes are saved as your next things to work on.
Report a problem
Exercise
Schreiben: Eine E-Mail an einen Freund · A2.1
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