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This can be a little confusing, as both verbs translate as 'to miss'. When wanting to say in German that you missed the bus, you might instinctively use 'vermissen', as it sounds more similar to the English word, however, this version of the verb is only used to express the feeling of missing someone or something, for example 'Ich vermisse meine Oma' (I miss my granny). When talking about a bus, deadline, or any other event that you missed, or that passed by, you must use 'verpassen'. E.g. 'Ich habe den Bus verpasst'

A common mistake amongst English natives when speaking German is the over-use of the imperfect tense (also called the preterite or the simple past tense). For example: "Ich aß einen Apfel", "Ich las ein Buch", "Ich trank eine Tasse Tee".This tense is usually reserved for written contexts such as newspaper articles and novels. You can think of it as the 'story-telling tense' - one that's used to talk about one-time events that happened in the past.The perfect tense is more commonly used in German than it is in English to describe events that took place in the past. This tense has two parts to it, the auxiliary verb (or 'helper verb') and the past participle. For example: "Ich habe einen Apfel gegessen", "Ich habe ein Buch gelesen", "Ich habe eine Tasse Tee getrunken". Most often, these sentences can simply be translated as: "I ate an apple", "I read a book", "I drank a cup of tea" (as opposed to "I have eaten an apple", "I have read a book", "I have drunk a cup of tea"). A common translation mistake would be to assume that these sentences always mean "to have done something", rather than simply "did something". Particularly in spoken language, the use of the imperfect tense is quite rare. The only verbs that are actually more commonly used in the imperfect, rather than the perfect, are haben and sein, and the modal verbs (können, müssen, wollen, sollen, mögen, dürfen). For example: "Ich hatte", rather than "Ich habe ... gehabt"; "Ich war", rather than "Ich bin ... gewesen"; "Ich konnte", rather than "Ich habe ... gekonnt".

For me, getting to grips with adjective endings was a real turning point in my learning of German grammar and immediately made the language make a lot more sense! The concept can be broken down into four tables: the definite article table (the different forms of 'the' which indicate the gender and case of the noun), and three tables for adjective endings (depending on whether the noun follows 'a' or 'the' or doesn't follow an article at all!) Unfortunately the best way I've found of learning these tables is to simply memorise them, which at first may seem daunting and impossible, but becomes easier as you come to put them into practice. The aim of articles is to indicate the gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), number (singular/plural) or the case (nominative/accusative/dative/genitive) of a noun. When this isn't completely clear (e.g. the article indicating both feminine nouns and plural ones is 'die'), adjective endings help to distinguish and give us extra information about the noun. These are especially important when there isn't an article at all, for example 'kaltes Wasser' (cold water). Here's a diagram with the three sets of adjective endings and helpful examples: [can show this diagram on whiteboard]

Luckily, the difference is nice and easy to learn! We’ll start with ‘wenn’. Firstly, ‘wenn’ can mean both ‘whenever’ and ‘if’. The reason I say ‘whenever’ is because ‘wenn’ is often used to describe a regular action, as opposed to a one-off. For example: ‘Wenn ich meine Hausaufgaben mache, bekomme ich Geld’ (Whenever I do my homework, I get money). Now an example for ‘if’: ‘Wenn ich durstig bin, trinke ich Wasser‘ (If I am thirsty, I drink water). The context will tell you whether to use ‘whenever’ or ‘if’ when you translate into English. Now for ‘als’. ‘Als’ is used to refer to a single event or period of time which occurred in the past, which has now finished. Here’s an example with a single event: ‘Als meine Mutter angekommen ist, war ich zufrieden‘ (When my mother arrived, I was happy). Now for an example with a period of time: ‘Als ich jünger war, las ich gern’ (When I was younger, I liked reading).