Learning verbs
Hi all
For the experienced Spanish learners out there I could do with your advice.
We all know that learning Spanish verbs is a nightmare 
but there is absolutely no escaping it! I have studied most tenses but have enormous difficulty when speaking in remembering the correct form so I have decided to just sit down every day and study for 30 mins in the hope that after several months I might finally have them in my head!
My question is: is it better to study one verb individually in all of its tenses or study one tense at a time?
I know there is no right answer to this, I was just curious as to what has worked best for other people.
Thank you in advance!!!
6 Answers
Of course by far the more effective means of learning is immersion in conversation with fluent speakers. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had much opportunity for this. However, when I eventually do, I’m sure by experience will initially consist of a mixture of stage-fright, panic, speechlessness, confusion & loads & loads of mistakes. I expect this is normal and nothing to fear. However, it is a necessary stage in the process of language acquisition. I have the good fortune to be trying to learn Spanish at the same time as my son is learning English. He is 4 and makes mistakes all the time. But he doesn’t really care. He just ploughs on through all the complex grammar of the English language & day by day improves. I suspect that not caring about making mistakes (while at the same time striving to do better next time) is crucial to success.
I cannot agree more with two points in this. Mistakes are necessary and unavoidable. Second children learn by absorption. They listen and mimic. This is easier for them than for adults because they don't have another language "interferring" with the process. But this is why conversation with native speakers is so valuable. You may say something in an awkward manner a dozen times and the then you hear a navtive express the same or a related thought and you hear it and it clicks into place. But in order to get that opportunity to hear how the native speaker(s) say something you will have to make lots and lots of mistakes to get there. Relax and go for it. I found that people are usually very pleased that you are learning their language and are not "put-off" by the mistakes..
Now about learning verbs. Decide which 100 verbs you use most in your native language, then drill those verbs in the present, preterite, imperfect and imperative. Let the other tenses come later. Every day pick five verbs and write out on paper ten sentences using each of that day's five verbs in different tenses and persons, ie 1st person singular present tense; 3rd person plural imperfect tense, etc.
If you do this you will at first encounter a million questions about structure and grammar. here is the forum to ask those questions.
Hola!. I found that practicing now and then with some of the free onlline sites line Conjuguemos and Spanleon was helpful. They contain the most frequently used verbs in all the tenses and Spanleon keeps track of your progress. I do have the verberator, but I did find it to contain many errors, which may have been fixed in recent updates.
I also use the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Tenses Workbooks. These give you lots of practice and the Practice Makes Perfect Basic Spanish, Prespositions and Verb Tenses are all very good. I usually take a workbook along when I am waiting at the doctors with my parents or have it for those random times when I have a few minutes of unexpected free time. I still have my verb challenges and frequently look them up on the charts. I am sure you know the basics, but this Spanish Verb Chart can be useful.
Best of luck in your Spanish learning.
Sandy
What you really need to do is continue using those verbs in conversation. That's the first thing I recommend. It's always hard in the beginning, we all go through that. You have to stick with it.
Keep talking and also find some written exercises that have you creating sentences (and therefore conjugating verbs) in context.
Rote memorization is only effective up to a certain point. Without putting things into everyday use you'll quickly forget it all over again anyway. But that's my opinion.
But if you must study in the traditional sense, I recommend studying one tense at a time, and only the most high frequency verbs. Only actively study the tense(s) that's recommended for your level, and then combine your studying with actual speaking.
What you think you know and what you actually know will be revealed as soon as you attempt to have a conversation with another person. And when you discover you can't conjugate a certain verb and/or tense as well as you thought you could, you now know exactly what you need to study. And then continue to go through that process a million more times.
Also, if you have a few extra dollars to spend then get yourself a copy of the Verbarrator. It adds listening, speaking and forces you to conjugate verbs in context by having you create sentences as well as conjugate verbs.
That's all I got, suerte!
I tell my kids that If you learn (a little at a time) all the endings of all the tenses and practice them, first of all with the regular verbs, (remember just a little bit at a time) then move on to the irregular verbs --simple stem changes and the like, and of course memorize which verbs are irregular and what kind of irregularities they have (this takes some memorization) You are on your way. The textbooks usually present this in a logical way. Just don't bite off too much at a time. All the tenses have some irregular verbs.
The preterite has a set of verbs which are a doozy! Here's a list of 12 of them. You have to memorize each stem of each verb then attach the endings. The fun part of it is that ALL these verbs some "ar" some "er, and "ir" Theyall have the same endings.
Check this out. On the left you have the infinitive on the right the irregular stem.
Andar---Anduv
Tener---Tuv
Estar---Estuv
Conducir ---Conduj
Hacer -----Hiz--some times Hic depends on what letter comes next
Decir ------Dij
Querer ----Quis
Poner ----Pus
Poder -----Pud
Traer ------Traj
Venir -----Vin
I think that's nine of them.. There are a few more that we teach in class.
Now the endings, I start with the "yo" form and end with the "ellos/Uds. form
e
iste
o
imos
isteis
ieron or jeron when the stem is a "j"
Now an "ar" verb: with the forms in the usual order.
Anduve anduviste anduvo anduvimos anduvisteis anduvieron
Now an "er" verb
Poder" pude pudiste pudo, pudimos pudisteis pudieron.
Now an "ir" verb.
Venir. Vine, viniste, vino, vinimos, vinisteis, vinieron.
Notice---NO accents. And the endings are identical.
The way I drill my kids on this, we have fun. First I get them to shout the irregular stems, we'll do three or four at a time, till they can shout them all out perfectly, then we get the endings. Then we will try conjugating about four or five verbs. The kids just soak it up. It takes about 30 minutes to get the whole enchilada. I think that this is better than trying to memorize the endings to every verb as a separate entity.
¿Está bien esto? ¿Qué opinan Uds.?
For what it’s worth (& my experience of Spanish is very limited, so it might be of little value), I would suggest a third way, which is to focus on specific verbs & forms that you reckon might be particularly useful.
For example, imperative forms of common verbs tend to be quite handy (& I’m given to understand Spanish-speakers use the imperative more often than we use English equivalents, i.e. we may tend to use ‘polite’ expressions more frequently, especially in British English).
E.g., ‘haz’, ‘pon’, ‘ven’ are all handy ways of expressing ideas common in both languages (although ‘pon’ is often used in Spanish where in English we would say ‘give’).
‘Handles’ are also very useful as they mean you can learn a few conjugated forms that let you link on to infinitives, e.g. ‘quiero’, ‘puedo’, ‘acabo de’, ‘tengo ganas de’ etc.
The distinction between the past perfect and preterite forms causes me some grief in Spanish. If in doubt I tend to ‘default’ to the past perfect (with the conjugated form of ‘haber’), which I find much easier to remember since you need only know ‘he’, ‘has’, ‘ha’, ‘hemos’ & ‘han’ + the participle form of the main verb, and Spanish participles are pretty straightforward (there are only a handful of irregular forms, unlike in English, which uses a typical Germanic weak/strong verb system for the past perfect). Although this might lead me to use the past perfect where the preterite would be more appropriate, nonetheless I would hope it conveys meaning, and it seems to me there is often a ‘gray area’ between these two tenses in Spanish anyway.
I’m not bothering with the ‘vosotros’ form at all just now.
Occasionally trying to translate your thoughts into Spanish might assist. Sometimes I undertake this exercise while doing the weekly grocery shopping, indulging in a constant internal monologue.
Of course by far the more effective means of learning is immersion in conversation with fluent speakers. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had much opportunity for this. However, when I eventually do, I’m sure by experience will initially consist of a mixture of stage-fright, panic, speechlessness, confusion & loads & loads of mistakes. I expect this is normal and nothing to fear. However, it is a necessary stage in the process of language acquisition. I have the good fortune to be trying to learn Spanish at the same time as my son is learning English. He is 4 and makes mistakes all the time. But he doesn’t really care. He just ploughs on through all the complex grammar of the English language & day by day improves.
I suspect that not caring about making mistakes (while at the same time striving to do better next time) is crucial to success.
Have you tried the Michel Thomas audio courses ? They're very handy if you wish to 'learn on the go' (in the car / jogging etc) & aren't too bothered about spelling at this stage since he focuses on spoken Spanish. I've only done the Michel Thomas Spanish courses & have to say that my end impression was that he is OBSESSED with verb-structure, If your Spanish is already good enough, you could perhaps skip his 8-hour foundation course & go straight to the advanced course, which is really just verb formation, verb formation, verb formation. He's not massively big on vocab, though, so you would need to supplement this with additional lists of useful verbs.
