Preterite Verbs
Any tips on how to better memorize the craziness that is Preterite Verbs?? 
6 Answers
Here's a trick I learned from Michel Thomas -
"AR" verbs end in "é" for first person, ó for third person verbs.
"ER/IR" verbs end in "í" for first person, ió for third person verbs.
For example: hablé (I spoke) - habló (he/she spoke) - comí (I ate) - comió (he/she ate)
Now make a "rhyme" out of it and give it a "cha cha cha" rhythm
é and ó..................í and ió
Sing it to yourself again and again until you feel silly and start laughing at yourself (don't worry - this is essential. It will force you to remember it)
He has lots of other similar methods for the other rules. If you're interested, check out his CDs.
Anyway, that's just an opinion. Let us know how you get on.
Saludos
Perdona pero no entiendo lo que quieres decir, como no va a ser importante el uso del pretérito, es fundamental para hablar espanol, lo que es más difícil es la diferencia del pretérito y el imperfecto para los extranjeros. Que tiempo verbal usas cuando hablas en el pasado?. La lista de verbos y sus conjugaciones ha de ser memorizada si se desea hablar español, no hay otra forma de aprenderselos. Yo lo túve que memorizar en el colegio cuando estudié gramática española. Soy española y en Madrid es obligatorio el saber todas las conjugaciones.
Harry's mum
Usted usa los conjugaciónes de los verbos regular. Memoriza contextos de los verbos irregular por conversaciónes especificos. Use conjugations of the regular verbs. Memorize the contexts of irregular vebs for specific conversations.
The preterit? An absolute waste of time learning this tense. There is zero chance that anyone will ever ask you "Where were you born?" / "How did you learn Spanish?" / "What did you do yesterday/this morning?" / "Did you like the movie?"
Forget the past and live in the moment!
I would recommend an application called "Genius." It quizzes you're vocabulary (or in your case, your preterit verbs) in a method that is proven to help memorize the words. It works on Intel Macs ONLY, though, as far as I can remember. You can also create a flashcard set on this website; they help a lot.
oh, btw you can get Genius on this website for free.
Personal opinion.
Preterite verbs are only important in a grammar sense. I don't think are very important in a normal conversation.I would not spent much time with these matter. You english speaker give a lot of importance to this question but my humble opinion is that you don;t have to think too much about it. Unless you want to pass a test or something like that.
