All teachers are familiar with the problems some students have with German word order. Teachers are also aware that students have different learning styles; some students pick up things quickest when the material is presented orally, others when it’s presented in text form, others when it’s presented in picture-centred form, others when they do something physical, and with most students a combination of these is helpful.
If students are having trouble with things such as verb position in relative clauses (or main clauses) and in questions involving a Ja/Nein answer, you can write (or get the students to write) the words and phrases of several example sentences on small placards (one word or phrase to a placard, at least A4 size). If you have the placards available in various colours, you can colour-code the placards of the sentence too, e.g. the verb placard red, the subject placard blue, the object placard grey, Zeitangaben-placard yellow, Ortsangaben green etc. I include a separate placard for the question mark and for a comma.
Examples of the types of sentences you can do this with are given below:
| Ich | spiele | gern | Fußball |
| Du | spielst | gut | Fußball |
| Spielst | du | gut | Fußball | ? |
| Mein Vater | spielt | gern | Tennis |
| Spielt | dein Vater | gern | Tennis | ? |
| Ich | bin | heute | gut drauf |
| Ich | habe | heute | Deutsch |
| Ich | bin | heute | gut drauf | , |
| weil | ich | heute | Deutsch | habe |
You ask as many students to come to the front of the class as there are placards for the specific combination of sentences you will be using, and each student holds one placard. You then say aloud one of the possible sentences, and the students who have the relevant cards line up appropriately from left to right holding up the placards, forming the sentence you said, while the other students hide their placards from view. You then say (or get any students who are left sitting in their seats to say) another of the sentence variations to the class, and the students reposition themselves, holding up their placards if required. In this activity students can practise their listening, their speaking, their writing, and get out of their seats!
Some students don’t pick up the correct position of the verb in German
intuitively, and like to know what the parts of a sentence are. Another way of doing the
above activity which is quicker and simpler to set up (however, it doesn’t involve
colours, which are good for some students), is to have 3 or 4 students line up in front of
the class, tell one of the students that she/he has become a verb, and as you (or the rest
of the class) say sentences involving different positions for the verb, the human verb
moves to the appropriate spot in the line, which is supposed to represent the sentence.
After every couple of sentences, the role of human-verb can be given to a different
student.
An interactive online quiz practising word order is accessible in our Sport resources page.
Compiled by D Nutting