“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 :).
I actually Got Fullmarks Yay!
I think the program is bugged. After it tells me I am right. I cannot see the answers I put in
ditto. Chrome is my browser.
Did you try pulling the prefixes into the gap`? If so, they need to go to the square on the right. That’s where they should stick.
I also have everything correct. That’s impossible because I’m stupid. Could you post answers here just to be sure?
I think you really did get them correct :). This format does get the answer marking right. So you’re not stupid, at all!!
could not get this to work — i am dragging the green squares onto the ____ but they don’t stick.
Also, you used nehmen and not machen :-)
Another bug?! This software is getting really annoying.
Could you tell me what device/browser you’re using?
Hiya,
I could not get this to work either, I try to drag the options and they don’t stick. Mind you, I have such a hard time with prefix verbs I’m only sure about 3 of the questions (gaining weight, taking the crown off and taking up more responsibility; the rst I’d just try and wing it).
As for the questions I wanted to ask you about German cities, I think I’ll skip the first one (as it wasn’t about Berlin, it was about which cities you find interesting to visit in Germany, apart from Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Heidelberg – these being the ones I’ve been to). Funnily enough, the second one IS about Berlin. I keep reading and hearing that Berlin is a German city where you feel you’re not really in Germany. This has so far been confirmed by a few people I know who’ve actually been there. As a Berliner (and a really staunch one, as it appears!), do you agree with this? Would you say this is true or rather that a lot of people have the wrong impression?
Bis bald!
I think, it depends on where you are a bit. But apart from all the expats here, Berlin is kind of unique in that really no one cares. People do not care how you look, they don’t care what you believe in, they don’t care what you do, they don’t care who you are or where you’re from. They just let you be. Ask Cari from Easy German. She comes from super catholic Münster and I think she feels at home here and accepted as “one of us”. Berliner’s are really quick with that, if you fit in (don’t care, be unpretentious and leave people alone).
It’s been a worker’s city for the longest time and that still shows. Also, Berlin has always been changing.
There’s a saying from the 20s last century like “Berlin is forever destined to become and never to be.”
And looking back at the last 100 years, that’s pretty damn accurate.
Germans find Berliners rude, badly dressed and uneducated and the find the city dirty and ugly and unrefined.
I wouldn’t really want to live anywhere else in Germany.
Berlin dirty??!! I am from India and I found it heavenly clean when I was there for a short while in 2012. :-P Actually I have been to other German cities too and Berlin is the best.
Okay, specifics :). Where in India?
Another user just mentioned that he tried dragging them into the actual gap. That does not work, you have to drag them to the square on the right.
Does that help?
Yep, I did that and now I cannot see the right answers to the ones I got wrong… :(
Thanks for answering my question about Berlin :)
Okay, at least that bug was one I could fix on the spot. You should be able to see your answers now.
Definitely check out Nuernberg, Rothenburg, Ulm, and also, just random villages along the way.
Hi, love the exercise, as always this website just keeps getting better, I still remember when I first stumbled onto it and read some of those funny prefix explanations, thanks for all the hard work.
The only problem I could find with this exercise is that once you move on to the fourth or fifth questions and you no longer see the word-bank, you can’t drag a word from the top to one of the questions below, the screen doesn’t scroll when you’re holding a word, on Safari at least, and as for the problem that some people had with the word not sticking to the blank ———, I first encountered it until I figured out the word goes in the space to the right of the question, it was an easy mistake to make, I guess everyone tried to put the word in the blank first thinking it’s not working. Perhaps allowing the word to fit directly into the blank would be simpler. But all in all I think you should definitely use this exercise again in the future for different prefixes and what not.
Have a nice day everyone.
Fitting the word into the blank would be great but the software is not made for this (and they won’t change it, it’s not custom made :).
But the thing about scrolling you mentioned is interesting. That can be really annoying, so maybe this exercise type is better served with a series of multiple choice questions :).
Thanks for all the great and valuable feedback!!
If your browser doesn’t support simultaneous drag and scroll then try zooming out the page a bit so that all the questions are in view.
Hell yeah!
Hacker 100.
Seriously though… I will not use this format again. Having to do stunts like browser zoom just isn’t acceptable. And it’s a disaster on mobile.
I definitely prefer multiple choice, if for no other reason than I had to simultaneously drag and scroll for the last couple questions.
That’s plenty of reason :). It’s things like these that make or break something.
Surprise surprise! The DRAG AND doesn’nt work. I couldn’t even see the answers to the questions. That’s why I give here my choices.
1aufnehmen 2zuehmen 3übernehmen 4 voehmen 5 einnehmen 6 abnehmen 7 Unternehmen.
An sonsten was kan ich darüber sagen ?
Bis bald
I’ll go back to multiple choice next time :).
The solutions are “auf, zu, unter, vor, ein, ab, über”
Hallo, sehr gut übung, aber ein bisscher schwer für mich… Ich hatte viel falsch! Gibt es nicht die korrekten Antworten? Danke!
Ja, sorry. Das Format zeigt sie nicht:
auf, zu, über, vor, ein, ab, über
I think it’s a nice exercise:) and yeah, frustrating! The last three have me puzzled.
i was able to drag and drop in the columns next to the sentences, but i cannot drag the prefixes and scroll at the same time, to get to the sentences I want to use them for.
I’m using Chrome on IOS :)
It works if you have a mouse wheel and you can hold the button at the same time.
Yeah, I know :)… no more this format!!
Lovely exercise. However, cannot see the corrects answers. I’ve got 5 and 7 wrong.
It’s auf, zu, unter, vor, ein, ab, über… the dumb software won’t show them :/
This worked okay for me. I got them all right!! :-) I had a little difficulty dragging the prefix to the box if the box was below the screen. It jumped around a lot (very disconcerting!) when I used the down scroll button.
It worked for me. In Firefox! Perhaps it’s easier with a mouse than other methods.
Didn’t show right answers to what was wrong, which I don’t mind if I can try again. The only way I could find to do that was to refresh the page.
For this sort of exercise I like the format.
Thank you, for this one and all the whole advent calendar/Kalender/calenduh. And of course everything else.
Ha, calen-duh… I didn’t even think of that yet. Nice :)
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!
great exercise, many thanks! :)
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.
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).
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.”
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.
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 :)
Worked einwandfrei for me on Chrome browser. Overall like the format! Multiple choice with tricky, haarspaltenden Options are my favorite :).
Good format but I did not do well. Only drawback is you cannot see which you got wrong.