Does Anyone Have An Easy way to learn the verbs like future tense?
easy way to remeber them? they are hard and i woudl love some rhyme or somethign to help me. i have done the reflexive verbs,irregular ones,future tense,past tense,presence? and i cant tell which from which! please help
7 Answers
Lots of practice and repetition is the only way that I am aware of. Here is a link to a site that is good for practicing these: Spanish Verb Conjugation
It's also important to supplement your writing practice with speaking, listening and reading in order to really reinforce what you are learning.
Listening - Watch Spanish television or listen to Spanish radio and pay special attention to the verb forms used. Make notes if you have to.
Reading - Read books written in Spanish and pay attention to the verb forms and make mental (or physical) notes as to why a particular verb form is used
Speaking - Although it would be ideal to have someone to practice with all the time, this is not always an option, but it is still a good idea to practice the various tenses in the context of an actual conversation. If you don't have a Spanish speaker present then use your imagination: practice on the wall or your dog, or practice on an English speaker by holding a conversation with a friend or family member (you can say something in Spanish, tell them what it means in English, listen to there reply and then translate this into Spanish for them).
Writing - Besides using memory exercises like the verb trainer, it is also a good idea to practice writing as much as you can (keep a journal, write stories, get a penpal, etc)
If you mean verb endings, it's absolutely necessary for speaking/writing correctly and very important (but some things can be inferred from context) for listening/reading. In either event, it is simply a matter of "brute force memorization". There are recurring patterns that simplify the memorization but there are also enough exceptions that you will still not be able to rely on a few "simple rules" (or some "simple explanation").
If you are referring to the use of tenses, many (but not all) tenses are used in much the same way in Spanish (and, of course, other romance languages) and English. However, you cannot expect a simple one-to-one correlation in the use of tenses across languages.
Do you own an Android mobile phone? I would highly recommend the Spanish Verb Trainer app by Robert Muth.
It uses a 'spaced repetition' schedule system, to prompt you after several days to repeat the conjugations you indicated you didn't know well. As well as Future tense, you can select from every other possible tense (even obsolete tenses like Future Subjunctive). The developer has built in some ready made review lists like 'Irregular Preterite' & 'Irregular Participle', which are very handy.
You can find similar verb training apps for other types of smartphones.
I found the Michel Thomas cds to really help. It's like someone walking you through them in an order that makes sense and giving you ways to remember them.
At the end you won't be able to forget how to form the verb tenses. He covers the present, future, conditional, preterit, imperfect, subjunctive, past subjunctive, and the perfect tenses. He doesn't teach much vocabulary, he just focuses on grammar.
For about 99% of the yo verbs just add a "e" with a accent on top of the e. Same goes with he others.
There is a verb conjugation trainer
Leaving the category blank selects verbs randomly from all of the categories. Selecting all of the check boxes lets you learn all of the tenses at once. There are a few errors that will keep you on your toes, too.
Do 400 correct conjugations a day and you'll have it down in no time.
If you do find the way, let me in on the secreto por favor!! Izanoni is right. You absolutely have to dive in practice and repeat what you have learned over and over again. But don't be discouraged, it will start to catch on if you are consistent.
