Conjugation
Conjugation is, essentially, changing a verb to reflect who or what performed the action described by the verb, as well as when it took/takes/will take place. You can practice conjugation on or off-line, but be sure to check out SpanishDictionary.com’s conjugation drills, conjugation charts, and interactive lessons!
Ah, the conjugation of verbs. Arguably one of the most troublesome features of Spanish—or nearly any language—for students! In Spanish you have to learn five (seven, if you use vos and vosotros!) conjugations for each tense: present, preterite, imperfect, conditional, future, subjunctive present, subjunctive imperfect, subjunctive future, imperative… and that’s not counting all the progressive and perfect tenses!
Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t worry! We’re here to help.
What Is Conjugation?
The Oxford Lexico dictionary defines conjugation as: The variation of the form of a verb in an inflected language such as Latin, by which the voice, mood, tense, number, and person are identified. In simple words, conjugation means changing a verb in order to give information about who is doing the action and when the action was, is, or will be done.
Conjugation in Spanish
In some ways, Spanish is more efficient than English. “Why?” you ask. Let’s look at one verb in both English and Spanish:
What do you notice?
Spanish doesn’t need a subject or subject pronoun to indicate what person the verb is! When we see a conjugated verb in Spanish, we can determine who did the action and when it occurred/occurs/will occur. In English, a subject must accompany the verb; the conjugated verb itself does not allow us to determine who did the action.
How to Practice Conjugation in Spanish
Old School Practice
We’ll be honest here. We used to review verb conjugations during swim practice. While doing laps, we’d run through conjugations in our head: “-é/-aste/-ó/-amos/-asteis/-aron” and repeat. It wasn’t the most high-tech way to memorize conjugations, but it worked.
As dull as it may be, repetition works.
What low-tech ways exist to memorize conjugations? Here are a few ideas:
- Make flashcards. Put a pronoun and tense on one side of the card, and the verb ending on the other side. For example: Yo, present, -ar | -o. For irregular verbs, write the pronoun and the verb on one side, and the conjugated verb on the other side.
- Songs! See if there are any songs online that talk about the tense(s) you want to study. Some are cheesy—really cheesy—but it’s precisely those cheesy earworms that help us learn!
- Write it out. Grab your notebook and make conjugation charts. Writing them down one or two times won’t suffice. Copy the chart until you’ve memorized it! Make sure to do this at least once a day to make sure you’ve truly memorized the conjugations.
- Talk to yourself or to someone else. Remember what we said about running through Spanish verb conjugations at swim practice? Whether you talk to yourself or with a friend, saying the conjugations en voz alta(out loud) is another option to study verbs.
Looking to learn vocabulary fast? Check out our article about how to learn 1,000 words in 15 hours.
Technology to the Rescue!
Technology has made studying a bit easier and more dynamic than it was in the past. Are you familiar with the options SpanishDictionary.com has to help you study conjugation?
If you’re on your computer, take a look at the navigation bar at the top of the page. Click on the Conjugation link, and it will take you to a page with three options: 1. Search for a verb to see its conjugation 2. Interactive grammar lessons for each tense and 3. Conjugation drills .
All three of these tools are great resources to help you practice conjugating verbs in Spanish. But what do they do, and how can you use them?
SpanishDictionary.com’s Conjugation Drills
SpanishDictionary.com’s conjugation drill tool allows you to practice conjugating verbs—plain and simple. The drill automatically corrects your work and repeats the questions that you answered incorrectly.
Create custom verb conjugation drills!
Do you have a test coming up, and your teacher has given you a specific list of verbs to learn? Not a problem! Go to SpanishDictionary.com’s Vocabulary Lists and click + Add New List. Then, create a new vocabulary list with the verbs you need to study.
Once you have created your list, make sure you are on the page where you can see all the words on your list. Click the down arrow next to the “Start the Quiz” button. Click on Conjugation Drill, and the verbs from your vocabulary list are automatically fed into SpanishDictionary.com’s Conjugation Drill tool!
Make sure to choose the tenses, categories, and pronouns you want to practice (Do you want to include vos or vosotros?), choose the number of questions you want, and click Start Drill!
SpanishDictionary.com’s Verb Conjugation Charts
There are two ways to access SpanishDictionary.com’s verb conjugation charts:
- Search for the verb on the conjugation search page.
- Search for a verb in the dictionary and click on the Conjugation tab just below the definition at the top of the page.
SpanishDictionary.com's conjugation charts include every form of the verb, in all tenses.
Did you know that, at the top of the conjugation chart, you can decide whether to include vos(you, singular, popular in regions of Central and South America) or vosotros(you, plural, popular in Spain)?
Also, if you hover over the conjugated verb, a speaker icon appears, and you can hear how the conjugated verb is pronounced. Also, when you hover over many of the conjugated verbs, you’ll see examples of the conjugated verb in context.
SpanishDictionary.com’s Interactive Grammar Lessons
If you’re sick of memorizing verb tenses out of context, give SpanishDictionary.com’s interactive grammar lessons a try! If you’re on the computer, click on the … in the navigation bar at the top of the page. Then, choose the Grammar section. From there, you have two options: type the tense in the search box, or simply scroll down and look for the tense you need to practice.
Which tense do you need to study? Here are just a few of the tenses available:
Make sure to click on the Start first lesson button to get started.
Have fun!
OK, now give SpanishDictionary.com’s tools a try and, once you’ve finished, see if you can write the conjugation chart in your notebook from memory. ¡Mucha suerte!(Good luck!)
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