“Prefix to Take”
Hallo ihr lieben,
welcome back to your favorite Advent Calender, door 19. And today, it’s time for you to get active again with everyone’s least favorite type of exercise:
Find the Right Prefix
The idea is that I give you a meaning and you have to find the right prefix verb for it. And the special thing is… it’s always the same base verb.
So in theory, this exercise seems to be rather easy, which makes it all the more frustrating if you don’t do as well as you initially thought. So it’s the perfect tool to take a little break from the trials and tribulations of the pre-Christmas season and instead have some trials and tribulations with language learning.
Hurra!!
[tell intern to insert a funny gif here and take out this note]
We’ve done this once in this calendar already with the verb ziehen and today, we’ll do the same for nehmen.
But this one is a premiere anyway, because we’ll try out a new exercise format. And it’s freaking fancy.
[tell intern to insert a funny, fitting gif here and take out this note]
Instead of just doing multiple choice or just thinking the solution like a flippin’ peasant from the 15th century, you get to drag and draw. Like a boss.
Seriously though… I’m not sure if this really is the best approach for this kind of exercise but I wanted to try it. The upside is that it looks nice and all the options are there, which makes it a little easier.
The downside is that each prefix can only appear once, because otherwise the computer would be confused. And maybe it’s a bit style over substance this way.
I’m really curious for your thoughts actually, so just give it a try and let me know.
Do you like this type of exercise? Do you like this format or would you prefer multiple choice? Or actually a translation option?
Let me know all your thoughts in the comments below.
Einen schönen Tag, und bis morgen :).
The software worked very well for me but … 2/10? Ak!
So, would be nice to have a “try it again” button for us rank beginners.
Liked the idea though — I now know the two I guessed right!
I’ll add the retry option next time :). But you can just browser refresh and do it again.
I really like this exercise (even though I found it hard!).
I think your principle of concentrating on one thing at a time (while the rest remains constant) is a really good approach.
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback. I really do think that focussing on one thing is helpful because we really give our brain the chance to “learn” the different options in that dimension. But the line if very fine here, and this type of workout can easily be confusing. I think the number of prefixes in one session matters a LOT.
Yay – got them all! (Kaum zu glauben.)
Wow :)!!!
Can that last post. I see from your earlier comment about pulling the prefix to the square and not the space! (No more excuses – here goes.)
Couldn’t get this to work. Tried again. Where can I get the answers?
There’s in the comment section here… yeah, I know… not very user friendly :D
I too can’t get this to work. I can drag the prefixes to the blanks, but they don’t stick. Lest my answers were being recorded notwithstanding the not-sticking problem, I checked my results. Got a 0. I probably would have gotten 1 or 2 right anyway (geez), so my answers probably didn’t take.
funktioniert ganz toll – aber eher etwas für die digitale Generation. Bloss nicht schreiben müssen!! Bildschirm ist besser.
Hahaha :)… ich habe mich gegen “tippen” entschieden, weil 50% der Leser auf ihrem Handy sind, und da ist tippen ein bisschen nervig.
Und ich glaube, dass, wenn man nur ein Präfix tippt, dann ist das nicht wirklich eine große Übung. man muss Sätze schreiben, meiner Meinung nach.
I got only one correct. Can I blame it on a bug? :D I do like the format.
Worked perfectly fine for me! Got the einnehmen and aufnehmen wrong! Frustrating, also because I am supposed to be at C1 level! (at least my certificate says so! :P )
Prefix verb are never really addressed in courses up to C1, so it’s totally okay to be shaky there :)
Would love to be able to see the correct answers!
I’ve added them to some other comments in this thread by now (not saying that this is convenient, at all :). I just don’t remember them, otherwise I would have put them again for you :)
Before I go try the quiz last question – Thomas has TAKEN more responsibility. (Or it could be ‘Thomas is taking more responsibility’ but that would not match the German.)
Good format but I did not do well. Only drawback is you cannot see which you got wrong.
Worked einwandfrei for me on Chrome browser. Overall like the format! Multiple choice with tricky, haarspaltenden Options are my favorite :).
I tried doing this on my Android and the drag ‘n drop worked fine UNTIL I needed to scroll down to get to the last two sentences. Couldn’t do that, so my quiz was incomplete. I liked the idea though; preferred it to multiple choice for this kind of exercise.
Btw, love this blog — and your humor! I’m learning a ton. Thanks for all your work on this site! Vielen Dank für die Hilfe deutsch zu lernen.
I don’t really know how to solve the scrolling issue for mobile, though. So either I limit the options to like 4 or 5 so that they fit on one screen or I switch back to multiple choice.
A workaround, just in case you want to finish the exercise, is to drag something to the lowest field displayed, then scroll the page and take it again and move it further down.
But yeah… that’s not user friendly at all :)
Thanks a lot for your efforts mate. German was the first foreign language I learnt before I learnt French. Now I am learning it again.
After reading all the comments, I just thought I’d add:
Safari
Worked fine when I dragged the prefix to the box to the right of the question,
Clicked on “see answers” and got a list of red/green questions, bright as a xmas tree, showing what I got right/wrong.
Only problem (and it’s the same on Seedlang and other sites with the same type of quiz) is that once I get far enough down on the list, I no longer have access to the prefixes – had to do some fancy footwork to get that last prefix in the box: either I can see the prefixes or the last questions, if you get what I mean.
Otherwise, worked perfectly, ‘cept for the fact that I mixed up two prefixes – I’m mies at prefixes.
Don’t understand why ZUMACHEN is closing, as in the door, but ZUNEHMEN is to GAIN weight – like, it seems that it would be loosing, like in ZUMACHEN being closed. Whatever.
The idea behind “zunehmen” is that you take “stuff” (muscle/fat) to you.
The odd one is actually “zumachen” for the door. The idea there is that the board is moved “to” the frame. English used to have the same back in the day, I think.
“Make the door to.”
5 outta 7. Mixed up über/ein
The problem with drag and drop is that once I get far enough down the question list, I no longer have access to the boxes that need to be dragged and dropped because my screen isn’t big enough (laptop).
I love the format but once I’ve checked my answers, although I can see which ones I got right or wrong, I can’t see what my answer was or what the right answer should be.
Is there some way to post an image so I can show you what I’m seeing?
I know what you’re seeing :). The software won’t show the solutions.
Here they are:
auf, zu, unter, vor, ein, ab, über.
great exercise, many thanks! :)
Woo hoo, full marks for me, and I wasn’t even guessing. Unheimlich! Those prefixes aren’t too tough to guess here: the outlier was probably aufnehmen, which is everyone’s unfavourite word in terms of the breadth of its meaning. But having been listening to the Easy German podcast a little bit recently, “aufgenommen” as “recorded” has came up a few times, so I got past that.
zu=”to/away” (so “zunehmen” as losing weight isn’t too much of a stretch), unter=”under” (so “undertake”, as per English), vornehmen I just guessed/remembered by a shonky analogy with vorsprechen, ab is always “off” or “away from” so no problem with “taking off”, and einnehmen was the last prefix standing!
(The quiz software worked perfectly for me in Chrome, once I realised that you had to drag the prefixes into the boxes, not onto the gaps in the sentences.)
Congrats for 100% :).
What I really don’t understand is why “aufnehmen” in particular is so confusing for learners. I mean, it is as you say… everyone gets confused by it. But to me, there’s just one core.
Good question: looking back through the list of suggested translations it’s pretty clear that they all revolve around the central idea of “taking on/absorption/inscription/incorporation”. It’s probably just the size of the list that’s a bit daunting. (I’m guessing that the suggested translation of aufnehmen as “shooting” must be the sort of activity that is performed with a camera, and not with a gun?)
Yes, it’s “shooting” in sense of recording :). Which dictionary are you using? There should be a little indication of context behind it, if it’s any good.
Yikes, I just realised my take on “zunehmen” is actually the opposite to reality: *add (weight) to*, as distinct from *go/take to*. Cool, that makes it 100% memorable now!