As you learn how to talk about things in the past, it is more important than ever to enter your German mindset – rather than thinking English thoughts and then translating them into German. Look at what the following sentences mean in translation:

As you can see, in English, we differentiate between using the 1-verb past tense (called the imperfect, e.g. I went) and the 2-verb past tense (called the present perfect, e.g. I have gone). In German, by contrast, all of the sentences use the 2-word past tense (Ich bin gegangen).

Another difference you may have noticed is that the first verb (called the auxiliary or helping verb) is not always haben in German, but in English it is always have. The grammatical explanation is that transitive verbs (=can take an object) take haben as the helping verb and intransitive verbs (= cannot take an object) take sein. Another way to think about it is this: Verbs that move someone/something thing from A to B will take sein. Since other verbs also take sein, the “simplest” way to remember which verbs take haben und which take sein is to learn both parts together. That means, when you are learning new sentences that allow you to talk about something in the past, work on memorizing the first and second verbs as a pair (Ich bin aufgestanden. Ich bin gegangen. — Ich habe geduscht. Ich habe gefrühstückt.)

A final difference worth noting is the location of the second verb (called the past participle). In English, the second verb immediately follows the first (I have gone to campus), but in German, the second verb comes at the end of the phrase (Ich bin an die Uni gegangen).