Hello everyone,
And welcome to a new episode of Tool Review.
Yup, another addition to my box of tools to drill and practice German.
In fact, here’s a list of the practice tools I have so far:
- German Cases
(lets you focus on one gender, case or article type at a time or do it all at once) - Verbs and Phrases with FIXED prepositions
(Stuff like warten auf, neugierig auf or enttäuscht von… ) - Pronunciation
(Get syllable by syllable feedback, option to pick what sound you want to focus on) - Local Prepositions
(Which location goes with which preposition in which context) - Text Comprehension Practice
(Reading and listening comprehension practice, exam-style, for all levels) - Writing Correction
(Get detailed AI feedback on your writing, including an analysis of systematic mistakes and what to work on) - German Case Chart Memory
(A game that let’s you practice case charts specifically, in case you need to or want to learn the actual tables)
You can find all these in the Practice menu and also on the Practice hub page.
Some of them are still in “article-form”, but I’m currently making them into proper tools where you don’t have to scroll forever.
I’ll leave the link to the Practice-hub below, so you can check out the other tools if you don’t know them yet.
But now, let’s get to the latest addition, a tool that lets you practice… drumroll
Reflexive Verbs
Hooray :)
About the Tool
With this tool you can practice the verbs that NEED a reflexive as well as those that just usually take one but don’t strictly need it.
You can also practice which verbs go with Accusative and which ones go with Dative.
I have gathered all the important verbs and uses and categorized them as well, so along with each answer, you’ll get info on what group the verb belongs to and why the answer is the way it is.
The sentences themselves come from AI, so it doesn’t get too boring, but for the grammar info, the game logic and evaluation I do NOT rely on Ai, but on good old classic programming, because Ai is just not reliable enough.
That doesn’t mean that the tool never gives a weird example, but at least when I tested it, it was about 95% reliable.
If you come across an example that feels weird or wrong, just flag it and that’ll remove it from your current practice set.
And oh… don’t worry about misflagging. Examples are always new for now and I do not review them, so if you flag something that was correct, it doesn’t matter. It’s not more work for me. If you feel weird about an example, remove it from your set and drill on. And you can of course ask me about it but you’ll have to include the example, because I do not save them at the moment.
Anyways, enough words… viel Spass mit dem Tool :)
German Reflexive Verbs – Practice
***
Level
Common reflexive verbs — the verb only exists with sich, or describes something done to oneself.
Reflexive case
Practice both accusative and dative reflexive pronouns.
Mode
Fill in the correct reflexive pronoun — or decide if none is needed.
Set size
7 questions per set.
***
Let me know how it worked for you and how you like it!
And of course let me know if you have any ideas on how to improve the tool or about a feature I could add (aside from tracking).
Oh and if you want to read my lesson on reflexive verbs… here it is:
Reflexive Verbs in German – Grammar Lesson
I really hope you enjoy it and it helps you get a bit more comfortable with the reflexive verbs.
All my tools in one place:
Practice Tool and Exercise Hub
Love this. But most importantly, CONGRATULATIONS ON BECOMING A DAD!!
Nice tool, however one of the answers (for Ich wasche ___die hände) telegraphed the answers to several unseen questions. Specifically it mentioned „..the same dative plus body part pattern as kämmen and putzen above“. At that point in the quiz i had not seen putzen or kämmen yet.
Small matter, but it made those answers easy to get correct. That said, maybe the pattern will stick better (für mich) because of this. I did, after all, write it all up and send it to you!
It’s weird that it said “above” but the repetition itself is on purpose. The tool is not meant as a test tool you do once but as a drill tool you come back to. Questions don’t really repeat.
And the explanations with the references to other words with similar logic are meant to slowly build this knowledge while you work. In that sense, it doesn’t really “give away” an answer that shouldn’t be given away. If you read the logic and then the verb comes up and you’re like “Hey, I just read this” then you have already applied a learned concept :)
I’m just getting a “could not generate questions” response myself. Anyone else? I’ve tried different browsers…
I’m having the same issue. Looking into it now!
Done!
Should be back up.
Vielen Dank!
I just received a scholarship for a year on your daily German, thanks to the generous support of this community. I’m so grateful to everyone who paid a little extra to help learners like me.
This support truly makes a difference. I’m excited to learn and improve my German!
Thank you again ❤️
– Amina
Congrats, Amina!
Whereabouts in Germany will you be studying?
She means the scholarship for this site here, which was funded by other members :)
Still, it could be a nice opportunity.
this is fantastic and something I really need. Thank you!!
The last few tools you’ve given us are more polished and useful than the previous ones. This is getting ever better! Thank you!!
More coming, one is particularly cool, at least in my opinion :)
It’s a really useful practice tool. Just one comment: when it is explaing the grammar for a verb that can either be reflexive or not, it says that it is “being used in a reflexive way” even when it isn’t. It’s a minor nitpick. I like the way it gives you the same sentence a few times more when you get it wrong, it helps fix it in the brain.
It’s a minor nitpick.
Nah, this is definitely a flaw. Explanations have to be consistent and coherent, otherwise the learner won’t feel safe.
Hello,
Let’s get some typos corrected:
“box of tools drill and practice German” (box of tools to drill and practice German)
“let’s you focus on one gender” (lets you focus on one gender)
“which verb go with Accusative” (which verbs go with Accusative)
“you’ll get info what group the verb belongs to” (you’ll get info on what group the verb belongs to)
“if you have any ideas how to improve the tool” (if you have any ideas on how to improve the tool)
I’ll have to try it another day because some work just landed on my inbox, but I think that the effort you’re putting into all these tools is mightly impressive :)
Bis bald!
Hi Emanual, as usual, I found it a useful tool. Out of 9 questions I had one repeated and another repeated twice. Is this to help my aged memory or is it glitch?
It does repeat questions if you get them wrong :). They’ll come back again. But it shouldn’t repeat the exact same example twice in one set ideally if you got it right.
Wann ereignest du ___ endlich?
Seems wrong to me. But?
It is, this is the AI tweaking out. If something like this happens, just ignore it and flag it so it doesn’t show again in your set.
Es hat SICH ereignet is possible though.
Takes oodles of practice before what sounds right actually is.
“Du legst ___ das Buch auf den Tisch.”
I got this, but the explanation was sich hinlegen. The sentence omits the hin. German can get interesting, but I know that the prefix of a trennbare verb isn’t optional. Thoughts?
So the sentence itself is fine without reflexive, but the verb is of course then just “legen”, not “sich hinlegen”. I had “sich hinlegen” marked as “transitive-reflexive” because you can hinlegen yourself or hinlegen something, but I guess that tripped up the Ai with how I prompt for the sentence. I’ll see if I can fix that.
Du legst das Buch auf den Tisch is perfectly fine. No reflexive needed.
Very nice but although I asked for “both” I only got Akk. Also one sentence was “Thomas merkt ____ die neue Telefonnummer.” and the bot said that “sich” was required, for “sich merken” – to remember. But without “sich” doesn’t the sentence correctly state, “Thomas notices the new telephone number.” You note the non-reflexive alternatives for many of the verbs I was tested on, but isn’t this one correct either way? Maybe a different object would be a better choice,where To notice wouldn’t work. …if you can explain that to the bot.
“Hallo, ich bin hier der Chef. Merken Sie sich das!”
Yo, I’m the boss around here. And don’t you forget it!
In this sentence, without the “sich”, it wouldn’t make much sense to a German speaker
So “merken” in the sense of “to notice” is a slow realizing of some sensation, vibe or mood or something. It does NOT work for this instant type of noticing, like seeing a phone number on the wall.
– Thomas merkt die neue Telefonnummer.
This sounds quite odd in German and it’s hard to find a meaning for it. Maybe he doesn’t get calls at all, after he used to get calls daily and after a few days he’s “feeling” the impact of the new phone number.
German simply requires a reflexive form where in English, for example, this is neither necessary, nor known.
There are numerous such instances, such as “sich aendern”, “sich rasieren”,” sich waschen”, “sich amuesieren” etc which in English do not automatically require a reflexive.
The blank threw me off at first, since I had it set for both accusative and dative and assumed I always had to choose between them. It took me a couple of mistakes to understand that part of the assignment was recognizing whether to use a reflexive pronoun at all. Once I caught on to that (and started seeing both accusative and dative choices) it was really good.
Once again, this is a great tool that I would love to use in my class. We can do it together on the classroom screen, of course, but in order for students to use it to practice individually, I’d have to give them my password, which doesn’t feel right in respect to you. Is there any legitimate way to allow my students full access? (Again, I think you could make some money if you market these tools separately from a membership; they are really great.)
That structure’s tricky for my students too, particularly as we start progressing into more advanced material.
Often sentences such as:
Ich wasche meine Haende. vs.
Ich wasche MIR die Haende. just confuse the heck out of ’em!
Here though, the Dative allows the action to “reflect back onto itself”, a concept foreign to English. As soon a the students stop translating “I wash me/myself the hands.” and learn to accept the new structure, they can apply it, correctly and naturally.
Hi Emanuel, I may be overthinking this. In the following example „Sie ändert____den Plan, the correct answer was Sie ändert den Plan,ie if you chose sich that was incorrect. Underneath that, but above the explanation , is sich ändern in a smaller font. In fact all of the questions so far have sich „verb“, regardless of whether it should have sich or not.
Sorry to type it out like this, I couldn’t get my screenshot to work.
Oh, I removed that! That was a leftover from testing.
Phew! Thanks!