The participle: ge- -t, ge- -en, and the ones with no ge-
CEFR A2 · part 1
edumaterial's parts within the level. The European framework does not subdivide them.
The dative: dem, der, dem and den + -nPutting any phrase into the dative: seeing that the marking travels in the article…The seven prepositions that take the dative: mit, nach, aus, zu, von, bei, seitAutomatically putting whatever follows these seven into the dative, without stopping to…Verbs that take the dative: helfen, danken, gefallen, gehören, schmeckenRecognising the dozen German verbs that take a dative rather than a direct object, and…The Perfekt with haben: the past that people actually speakTelling any past event the way Germans do when they speak: haben conjugated in second…The Perfekt with sein: moving and changing stateDeciding in a second whether a verb takes haben or sein, using the two questions that…The six modals: können, müssen, wollen, dürfen, sollen, mögenUsing the six modals with their odd conjugation —first and third person are identical…The rule, in three lines
The participle is built from three pieces: ge- in front, the stem in the middle and -t or -en behind. Regular verbs give ge- + stem + -t: gespielt, gemacht, gekauft. Strong verbs give ge- + stem + -en and nearly always change their vowel: sprechen gives gesprochen, trinken gives getrunken. And two families take NO ge-: those ending in -ieren and those starting with be-, ver-, er-, ent-, ge- or zer-.
The usual slip. Putting ge- on everything. gestudiert is what comes out by itself, and the right form is studiert. The reason is not grammatical but phonetic: ge- only goes on when the stress falls on the FIRST syllable. In studieren it falls at the end and in verkaufen on the stem, so in both cases the ge- has nowhere to sit.
Why it catches you out. English has exactly the same split —walked against spoken, written, taken— and the -en ending of the strong ones is the same -en as German's. So half the work is done. What English has no trace of is the ge-: it lost it, though it is still hiding inside the word «enough», which used to be «genoh».