Learning the past tenses in Spanish
Hello, people!
A question for learners of Spanish. How long did it take for you to get a feel for all the past tenses in Spanish? I meant more than just knowing the conjugations but actually using them without having to think, "Is the action completed?" "Does it relate to the present?" "Is it just background details or is it a completed action in the past?"
I've just started my second year evening school Spanish - a GCSE class, for those who know what that means. We did some work on the preterite towards the end of the last year (Beginners class) and now we have just started the imperfect. I know them in theory but I doubt if I could use them with ease before the end of the academic year.
How long did it take you? As a comparison, it took me about two years, and with lots of practice, before I could use the imperfect and perfect tenses in French correctly. I know we all learn at different speeds, but I am just interested in finding out.
6 Answers
A good way to speed up the process is to write or speak examples of daily routines. Change the tenses of the sentences , It worked for me!
It took me a good month or so just to figure out when to use them with context. It took me about 2 to 3 more months to find out how to use them without context! I think it all depends on your personal learning speed- how fast you can pick up on things and how things are calculated in your brain. I know that you already know this, but I feel this is super essential to learning 
. I will be pefectly honest, though, I still sometimes have some issues with the past tense. If you speak French, I'm sure that you won't have as big as a problem I did, because I read somewhere that speaking another language really helps learning a new one as a lot of the same features are shared throughout.
I'm still learning - I know the mechanics now I'm just working on the practical application lol - hence the games je je
Pret / Imp and Pret Imp Practice - not sure how I ended up with two games on the same subject but I must have really needed double help. lol
I'm not quite there yet. It's a work in progress 
. Sometimes it comes naturally (and then, I stop to double-check that what I said is right, ha) and other times I have to stop and think before I speak.
When i was in english class i asked my teacher what use to and what wasthe same to in spanish (I was taking ESL English as a Second Language) and he said it was the same as hablaba, comia....so basically it took me very little time to know what was going on. I did practice.
I'll tell you when I manage it, to feel really really comfortable is a bit beyond what you need with GCSE level. But just learning the forms and things and just being able to translate them directly from English without really understanding the differences between the English tenses and the Spanish tenses won't take long, and once you can do that you'll be pretty much understood for the most part. I know they're really intimidating at first, but don't worry about them. Step by step!
The thing that helped me the most with the past tenses (and helped even more with subject / object pronouns) was reading in Spanish. Read as much as possible. Authentic texts, things that you're actually interested in, not just school work.
