The perfect tense with haben
Perfekt mit haben
Talk about completed past actions with a correctly conjugated form of haben and a past participle at the end.
Spoken German often uses the present perfect for past events. Conjugate haben for the subject and put the past participle at the end: Ich habe gearbeitet. Regular participles often use ge- + stem + -t, but separable and irregular verbs must be learned carefully: abholen → abgeholt; anrufen → angerufen.
Ich habe gearbeitet.
I worked / I have worked.
Wir haben Deutsch gelernt.
We learned German.
Sie hat Kaffee gekauft.
She bought coffee.
Ich habe die Küche geputzt.
I cleaned the kitchen.
Hast du angerufen?
Did you call?
Er hat das Paket abgeholt.
He collected the parcel.
Build the tense in two steps: choose the correct form of haben, then place the participle at the end. Keep objects and time information between the two verb parts.
Use this form to report what you did, learned, bought, cleaned, collected or called about.
Do not use sein with ordinary activities such as arbeiten in this lesson. Say “Ich habe gearbeitet,” not “Ich bin gearbeitet.”
The auxiliary changes; the participle waits at the end: Ich habe … gearbeitet.
Report four completed actions using different subjects, then turn one du sentence into a question.