I was sitting in my class the other day and my teacher noted something that I thought would be very helpful in learning the tenses of the verbs. In class you typically start in present tense, then move to past perfect, and then to the simple past. This process causes you to get back and associate each tense with verbs you know requiring you to triple the amount of time you spend studying since every verb has to be learned three different times in different contexts.
In class my teacher mentioned learning these tenses at the same time with each new verb which makes a lot of sense! Take the verb Haben (to have) you start in 101 learning the verb and its tenses: Ich habe | du hast | er/sie/es hat | wir haben | ihr habt | and finally sie haben. With the way frau Damwerth taught it you would be expanding the initially volume to include other tenses which makes the word association easier. This also will help with understanding strong and weak verbs which for German come into play a lot. For example using the same word haben you would now learn it as:
Ich – Habe | Hatte | Gehabt
Du – Hast | Hattest | Gehabt
Er/Sie/Es – Hat | Hatte | Gehabt
Wir – Haben |Hatten | Gehabt
Ihr – Habt | Hattet | Gehabt
Sie – Haben | Hatten | Gehabt
As a note the final column, the Past Perfect, always has one tense that remains the same but by including it, it helps reinforce the verb structure. The Past Perfect does not always look so similar to the verb, for example the verb Sein (am; so Ich bin is I am) is irregular and in the past perfect it is Gewesen. By learning verbs this way, I believe it could help better with understanding the nuances that come with learning the verbs in German. Hope this helps!
