Spanish Verb Conjugations: How to Master the Main Tenses.

Spanish verb conjugations are the most difficult challenge for Spanish students. In my experience, I have met many students who have come from other teachers and other schools who feel frustrated about this.

Why is this? Am I the best teacher in the world? Of course not. The point is that language teachers need to reflect on the language they teach. This process of reflection helps us to understand the students’ difficulties in grasping the subject.

Spanish tenses correspond to logical explanations, and if students do not memorise them, but understand them well when they need to use them, success will be achieved.

Main tenses?

Well, let’s say that the main tenses are the tenses we use to express ourselves in the past, present and future.

Each of them has its own irregular verbs. The present tense is the first one we should learn when we start learning Spanish.

Regular verbs: Those that always follow the rules.
Irregular verbs: There are different kinds of irregular verbs. Those that change because of vowels, those that change the first person singular or those that change a consonant.

A few examples:
Hablar – regular verb – “hablo”
Dormir – irregular verb because of vowels – “duermo”
Caer – irregular verb only in the first person singular – “caigo”
Oír – completely irregular verb – “oigo, oyes…”

Past tenses?

There are a few past tenses in Spanish, but let’s focus on the most important ones: indefinido and imperfecto.

Imperfecto is used, for example, to talk about things we used to do.
Indefinido is used to talk about actions, not descriptions, and punctual facts.

Do we use all of them?

The answer is yes. It is very important to know well when we need to use each of them if we want to speak Spanish correctly.

Do I have to learn all Spanish verb conjugations?

Of course you need to if you want to speak Spanish. I said before that grammar is not the problem. The problem is some of the old methods that are sometimes used.

Grammar is very important for understanding how to use Spanish as a language. We cannot ignore it if we want to speak well. If you are a teacher, you know that we have to create different dynamics to get our students into the language.

How to master the main tenses?

We take the student step by step through each stage of learning. We know how to introduce the Spanish tenses in such a way that students learn them without having to go through a tedious and boring process.