Help me with some tenses?

Question

I don't understand the who verb thing when it comes to spanish.

Write the correct verb in the preterit: ella / hacer

Write the correct verb in the preterit: yo / estar

Write the correct verb in the present tense: ella / ser

Answer 1

1. This should be hizo, used like this: «Ella hizo la tarea anoche, pero yo no la hice.» That means, "She did the homework last night, but I didn't do it."

2. This one is estuve, used like this: «Estuve en la clase de matemáticas a las diez de la mañana. Ahora, estoy a mi casa.» When you translate that, it should say something like: "I was in math class at ten in the morning. Now I'm at home."

3. Ser conjugated to the él/ella/usted form in the present tense is es, used like this: «Ella es una maestra de las clases de matemáticas.» That roughly translates to: "She's a math teacher."

I accidentally gave you the wrong answer to #3 earlier; I gave you the preterite form, not the present; I didn't realize that one was different. Oops! Sorry!

I think that it'd really help you to familiarize yourself with irregular verbs. I know it helps me a lot; every time my class learns a new tense (past, present, future, conditional, etc.) or mood (subjunctive, indicative), my teachers (I had the same teacher for Spanish I and Spanish II, but I have a different teacher now, in Spanish III) help the class memorize, or at least be able to recognize, the irregular conjugations for that tense or mood. Just doing the workbook pages and other assignments that she gives us is really what gets me my good grades; after doing those, there is no need to study! (That always applies to me, but everyone else I know has to study, so you might want to do so, too . . .) If you're curious about my grades, I earned a 100 in Spanish I--no studying--a 99 in Spanish II--still no studying (had I studied, I would have gotten a 100, haha)--and the first nine weeks for Spanish III is about to end on Thursday, but I'm pretty sure that I have a 97 or above--most likely above a 97, still without any studying!! I'll probably be posting a chart of all the irregular preterite verbs and their endings later, so that should help you out a little.

Yup, I got a 98--the worst grade I've ever gotten in a Spanish class! Ugh! Hahaha, just kidding; it's still a high A, worth the same amount of points on our 6-point GPA scale. - cheerandfield, Nov 27, 2010

Answer 2

First of all, make sure you understand the persons:

• first person singular: I
• second person singular: you (informal)
• third person singular: he, she, it, & you (formal)
• first person plural: we
• second person plural: you (informal)
• third person plural: they & you (formal)

Search "ser" in the conjugation tool (which can be found under "more" at the top of the page) and you will get... soy, eres, es, somos, sois, and son. (They are in the order of the list above.)

In case you don't know, hacer, estar, and ser are irregular verbs, meaning that all or most their conjugation can only be done through memorization. So if it's your first time to play with Spanish verbs it will take a bit of time to get used to them.

For most verbs there are general rules about them. For a good explanation, be sure you check out the lesson videos. They explain conjugation pretty well.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Unless you understand the basic parts of speech, you don't stand a chance of learning a foreign language. Have your teacher explain what nowns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs are. Nowns can act as subjects and objects in sentences. It does no good to conjugate verbs if you don't know what a verb is.