1.2 Meine Morgenroutine
Lektionsüberblick
In this lesson, we will expand on your ability to talk about your day-to-day life, by introducing the words and phrases necessary to talk about your morning and evening care routines. You should focus on committing to memory the words and phrases most relevant to you. In the end, you will be able to 1) talk about your morning (and night) care routines in the present, 2) say how often you perform elements of your care routine, and 3) talk about your past care routine.
1) Die Morgenroutine
Wie sieht deine Morgenroutine aus? What is your morning routine like? In the previous lesson, we remembered how to say when we get up, shower, have breakfast, and go to campus. But what about the in-between steps like getting dressed and brushing our teeth? Let’s look at the first set of phrases of a care routine. Be sure to listen to the audio before turning the card over. If you want to challenge yourself, write down what you hear, before turning the card over.
You may have noticed that many of those phrases look a bit different from the way we talk about care in English. Every sentence had the word mich in it, which means “myself” when ich is the subject. The biggest difference in these phrases is that you can’t leave off the mich in German like you often can in English. Yet another reason to enter your “German mindset” while learning and then using German, instead of thinking of German through English!
Jetzt bist du dran!
Write down the phrases that fit your morning routine. Listen again to how each phrase is pronounced and practice saying the phrases aloud.
You may be wondering where the other bits of the morning routine are, like brushing one’s teeth. Let’s look at the next set of phrases. Pay closest attention to the phrases that are most relevant to you! Be sure to listen to the audio before turning the card over. If you want to challenge yourself, write down what you hear, before turning the card over.
Kleiner Hinweis
What do you think about those phrases? Did you notice similar or even bigger differences from how we talk about care in English.
You may notice in particular that none of the self-care phrases uses “mein” (“my”). E.g. In English, you would say “I wash my hair” but the German equivalent is not a direct translation “Ich wasche mir die Haare”.
You can probably guess what the next comment will be! Genau, now is a great time to work on committing words and phrases to memory without thinking about the English translations. The pictures on the cards should be a great help!
This set of phrases lends itself to the bathroom mirror method: Write down the ones that are relevant to you and tape them on your bathroom mirror. Then say them to yourself every time you see your note – especially when you are doing the action!
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Write down the new phrases that fit your morning routine. Listen again to how each phrase is pronounced and practice saying the phrases aloud.
2) Einmal am Tag, zweimal am Tag…
Wie oft putzt du dir die Zähne? Wie oft wäscht du dir die Haare? Wie oft schneidest du dir die Nägel? Do you have the same answer to all of these questions? Or do you perform some care activities more frequently than others? For example, a dentist will recommend that you brush your teeth at least twice a day, but maybe you do so more (or less) often. This section reviews and introduces different ways of talking about frequency, when it comes to your care routine. You might remember from Deutsch im Alltag II that you learned many frequency phrases. You might choose to return to that Lektion before moving on.
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Go back to the phrases from #1 that fit your morning routine. Rewrite each sentence adding the detail of how often you do each thing. For example,
Ich dusche mich einmal am Tag, aber ich putze mir die Zähne zweimal am Tag.
3) Gestern nach dem Aufstehen
Was hast du gestern nach dem Aufstehen gemacht? What did you do yesterday when you got up? Now let’s see how to talk about the morning routine in the past.
Was hast du gestern nach dem Aufstehen gemacht? Write down which parts of your morning routine that you did yesterday.
Use the sentences from the flashcards as your model. When you are done, look over the model sentences to check for spelling and structures.
Then record your sentences in your audio journal. Be sure to listen to your recording and rerecord, if you are not satisfied.
Jetzt kombinieren
In this lesson, you reviewed how to 1) talk about your morning (and night) care routines in the present, 2) say how often you perform elements of your care routine, and 3) talk about your past care routine.
In this combination activity, like in our previous lesson, you can either imagine a scenario, in which you are recording your actions in real-time throughout the day and then comparing them to yesterday, or you can actually do it. Just keep your written journal with you throughout the day and periodically write down a sentence in German about what you are doing. Then think about what that activity looked like a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. For example,
Heute dusche ich mich um 7 Uhr. Gestern habe ich mich um 10 Uhr geduscht.
Heute putze ich mir die Zähne zweimal im Tag. Gestern habe ich mir die Zähne nur einmal geputzt.
Heute föhne ich mir die Haare. Gestern habe ich mir die Haare nicht geföhnt.
Whether you are are writing down your activities in real-time or all in one setting, be sure to compare you spelling and structures with the vocabulary in this lesson. Once you are done, record your comparisons in your audio journal. Be sure to listen to your recording and rerecord, if you are not satisfied.
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