How can I increase the variety of my sentence structures?

To really boost your marks at German writing you need to avoid starting all your sentences in the same way. Below are 4 different ways of beginning a German sentence:

1. With the subject of the sentence: Es hat geregnet und ich bin zu Hause geblieben. (It rained and I stayed at home).

2. With an adverb: Leider hat es geregnet und ich bin zu Hause geblieben. (Unfortunately it rained and I stayed at home).

Other good adverbs to use: Normalerweise (normally), hoffentlich (hopefully), natürlich (naturally), zum Glück/ glücklicherweise (luckily)

 

3. With a time phrase: Gestern hat es leider geregnet und ich bin zu Hause geblieben. (Unfortunately it rained yesterday and I stayed at home.)

Other good time phrases to use: letztes Wochenende (last weekend), in den Sommerferien (in the summer holidays), heute (today)

 

*Remember with sentence beginnings 1-3, the main verb of the sentence (underlined in each example) needs to come second.

 

The next level:

4. With a subordinate clause: Weil es gestern geregnet hat, bin ich zu Hause geblieben. (Because it rained yesterday, I stayed at home.)

Other subordinate clauses you could use: Obwohl (although), sobald (as soon as), als (when)

 

**Remember with subordinate clauses (so after ‘weil’, ‘obwohl’ etc.) the verb needs to go to the end of the subordinate clause. (Weil es gestern geregnet hat, ...) The second part of the sentence needs to be divided from the first with a comma and here the verb needs to come first. (..., bin ich zu Hause geblieben.)