How do you study your verbs
Hello everyone,
I am reviewing my verbs for spanish so they won't be so they won't hard to remember. Is there any advise you can give me. I went to the store to get flashcards so when I am away from the computer I can still study.
Thanks
7 Answers
I usually don't study the verbs in isolation. I do most of my learning by translating full sentences either on Duolingo or Quizlet. This forces you to learn the verbs in context and makes you practice word order, spelling of verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, accents, etc. at the same time that you are practicing verb conjugations. If you get one thing wrong you have to redo it. After awhile you get very good at making sure the verb conjugation, tense and mood are correct while simultaneously getting adjectives and nouns to agree in tense and number, using prepositions properly (including para and por) all the different ways to use se, etc..
On Duolingo I have taken the entire course both ways: 1st I tell the system that I am an English speaker and want to learn Spanish.
When I completed that I told the system I was a Spanish speaker and I wanted to learn English.
After every exercise...and there are probably thousands of them...there is a discussion forum about the exercise. Reading these is very enlightening when you don't understand why you got it wrong. You can also ask a question about the exercise and you almost always get helpful responses which you can learn from.
Doing the course as if I were a Spanish speaker, when I read the discussion, of course it was almost entirely written in Spanish by Spanish speakers trying to learn English. At first it was soft of difficult to understand what was being said, but after awhile I was able to understand 90% of what was being said I could also make comments in Spanish and other users would correct my Spanish.
In summary, I highly recommend learning verbs in the complete context of sentences. You may not learn as many verbs as quickly as just studying verbs in isolation, but what you do learn will put you much further along in terms of being able to use the language.
I started the 500 Verbs Thread because I wanted to learn new verbs and practice the most used tenses of the verbs. It takes a little time, but making a post each day has helped me learn verbs more easily.
Here's the link if you want to try it out. We are now using the second list since it had even more verbs.
500 Verbs
Hi Roz:
The best way is to memorize the verb endings for all the tenses (one at a time of course) Remember there are three classes of verbs. Those ending in ar, er, and ir..
Start with the present tense, then as the class moves on you will learn the two past tenses, future, conditional and so on.
Memorize the endings--also memorize those verbs that have a stem change. Then there are those irregular "buggers" that don't follow the usual pattern.
Does this sound like work? Yup! It sure is. You should have seen the "fun" I had when learning English when I had to memorize over 240 irregular past participles. I still have them written down somewhere.
All language learning involves a lot of "hard nosed" memorization and discipline. Buena suerte, Chica. ??
OK, to go along with my previous answer to this question in which I advocated doing translations of entire sentences when learning verb conjugations some might want to know how to get appropriate sentences in Spanish & English to practice.
Do NOT just make up sentences on your own, unless you are already an advanced Spanish speaker who knows all of the rules of grammar and the most common ways of saying things in Spanish. The purpose of this exercise for most students is to learn verb conjugations while also practicing good grammar and phrase structures, idioms, etc. It is way too easy to make a mistake when constructing a flash card set and then if you practice that mistake over and over, it will be hard to unlearn.
For a similar reason, do NOT use a computer/machine translator. These are OK for getting a good idea of what is meant by the words in a foreign language but no machine translators exist today that will not make a lot of errors.
For a ready-made set of sentences to practice I highly recommend Duolingo. It is free and there are thousands of sentences already developed that are ready for you to practice. Exercises are grouped into lessons of about 20 questions each by natural topic (foods, occupation, communication, etc.) or grammatical topic (subjunctives, conditionals, etc.)
Another very good source for English - Spanish sentences for building flash card sets is right here on Spanishdict.com. Most of the grammar lessons have sentences in them. Just cut and paste these into a spreadsheet and then cut and paste them in batches of 20 - 30 into Quizlet and you will have a lot of great sentences to translate using the Learn mode of Quizlet. In addition to Spanishdict there are many other good websites for learning Spanish that have tons of full sentences in English and Spanish.
Another great resource is the Spanish Sentence Maker at http://www.123teachme.com/translated_sentences/sp Just enter a conjugated Spanish verb (or any other word) and get sentences in Spanish and English using that exact word. Cut and paste into a spreadsheet as before and transfer to Quizlet. Or enter a phrase in either Spanish or English. Sentence will usually range from 4-6 word simple sentences to sentence with multiple clauses and 20 or more words. Select sentences that are appropriate for your level...somewhat challenging, but not so tough that you couldn't understand their structure without a lot of research and studying.
Another possibility is to use a website that has translations of song lyrics. There are also thousands of movies and TV shows with subtitles you can download in both English and Spanish. For this, I recommend using Spanish movies, like Volver and Broken Embraces to name two of my favorites. Or songs by Julio Iglesias if that is your cup of tea
I agree you need to put work in. You will notice patterns so it becomes easier. Learn haber early on as it is part of some composite verbs and in the third person is used for there is. You say you like music we often listen to music in our class. I still remember a Spanish version of 'If I were a rich man' and 'Ojala' by Silvia Rodriguez - both these deal with the subjunctive which you may not yet have learned. I cannot add links easily as I am on my tablet. I will try adding some later. Our teacher would get us to listen then give us copies of the lyrics with blanks for the verbs then we relistened and filled in the gaps
The Michel Thomas audio course are excellent for teaching you verb grammar. You can buy a copy of the introductory course for about £12 on Ebay. The Introductory course consist of 8 discs, each about one hour in length. Or, if your Spanish is already good enough, you could jump straight to the 'advanced course'. The advanced course is shorter and consists mainly of mainly revision of the introductory course, but it's a little faster-paced, and it gives a you a bit more detail on the subjunctive, for example. It also uses native speakers, which is handy.
Michel Thomas really does a wonderful job of breaking down Spanish verbs, which are, let's face it, by far the hardest aspect of what is otherwise a relatively straightforward language. However, you also need to practise what you've learned. I've found the lessons on Spanishdict excellent for this (albeit, to my shame, I haven't actually taken many of them yet). Michel Thomas doesn't deal with the 'vosotros' form, at all, however, which if a deficiency in an otherwise outstanding course, but only if you intend to travel in Spanish-speaking countries where they still use this form (like Spain).
Of course, some verbs and verb forms are used more commonly than others, and I guess the best way to learn these is by listening to as much Spanish as you can.
Dani says she had to spend a lot of time learning English verbs, which I don't doubt. I asked my Bulgarian friend what aspect of learning English she had found hardest, and similarly she said verbs (although I suspect the differences between verb grammar in English and Bulgarian are greater than those between between English and Spanish). That said, I suspect verbs are probably easier in English than in most European languages (with the possible exception of Afrikaans) because they have fewer forms. If anything in English the challenge may consist of mastering the many different meanings that a single verb or verb form can convey, e.g. 'I put' could be translated as 'pongo', 'puse' or 'ponía', depending on context, while I can't conceive of how non native English-speakers even begin to deal with 'get'... !!
