Resources to help me learn when to use different Spanish verb tenses
May 3, 2018 4:00 PM Subscribe
I’m studying Spanish, and trying to learn when to deploy the various Spanish past tenses. Looking for a book of exercises to help me practice.
I’ve got Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses which is great for drilling verb conjugations, but it does each tense a chapter at a time, so it’s not great for helping you think through for yourself which tense to use in any given situation.
Would love some recommendations for something that’ll provide exercises to help me work through this during the summer break before evening classes start again. Bonus point if they manage to make it interesting! (For example, I bought Breaking out of Beginners’ Spanish a few years ago after an AskMe recommendation and loved it while I was travelling in Spanish speaking countries. But it’s not really a workbook, which is what I’m after. But something that manages to be not-too-dry in the same way would be great.)
I listen to podcasts and read parallel texts, so I’m getting some exposure to correct usage, but I want some exercises to make me sit and think through: “If I want to say I had been wearing a hat as opposed to I always wore a hat, how do I do it?”
And I know - I'm only on the past/conditional/future tenses, there's worse to get my head round once we move on to subjunctive etc., so I'll no doubt be glad of a good resource that covers that in due course too.
Probably prefer books to online but open to all suggestions. Available in the UK if possible, though could order from overseas if it was really good.
I’ve got Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses which is great for drilling verb conjugations, but it does each tense a chapter at a time, so it’s not great for helping you think through for yourself which tense to use in any given situation.
Would love some recommendations for something that’ll provide exercises to help me work through this during the summer break before evening classes start again. Bonus point if they manage to make it interesting! (For example, I bought Breaking out of Beginners’ Spanish a few years ago after an AskMe recommendation and loved it while I was travelling in Spanish speaking countries. But it’s not really a workbook, which is what I’m after. But something that manages to be not-too-dry in the same way would be great.)
I listen to podcasts and read parallel texts, so I’m getting some exposure to correct usage, but I want some exercises to make me sit and think through: “If I want to say I had been wearing a hat as opposed to I always wore a hat, how do I do it?”
And I know - I'm only on the past/conditional/future tenses, there's worse to get my head round once we move on to subjunctive etc., so I'll no doubt be glad of a good resource that covers that in due course too.
Probably prefer books to online but open to all suggestions. Available in the UK if possible, though could order from overseas if it was really good.
Google for the FSI Spanish texts and audio. They are free and there are several sites that host them. It's an entire course that does a lot of drilling. There is also a text-only workbook. The only problem I have is finding where to start in it when I want to skip ahead to a chapter that covers the part I want. The table of contents is very unhelpful.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:00 PM on May 3, 2018
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:00 PM on May 3, 2018
While I want to say that you should learn Spanish grammar in whatever order you're excited about, I'm also a bit wary of the order you've chosen here, so it's worth a comment.
You should get competent with the pretérito and the imperfect, but beyond those, you're probably better served with other language capacities. I strongly recommend subjunctive practice as much as possible. Most complicated sentences in English in terms of tense are said relatively simply in Spanish, IME.
To wit: I speak Mexican/Central American Spanish. I use the subjunctive every time I speak--you can't get by as a competent speaker in Spanish without it. Especially, the present subjunctive is far more important than the tenses and odd constructions in the OP ("I had been wearing a hat"). The imperfective subjunctive is also more useful than the future tense (especially since you can ir a+ your way through actions in the future by forming it in present tense).
On the other hand, here the future and perfect tense are used much less often in Spanish than in English. The future isn't used much--it's either the present with future connotations ("mañana vamos para la playa") or the ir a+ version ("voy a ir por agua"). In addition, the perfect takes the place of the English pluperfect (pluscuamperfecto in Spanish) in almost all instances of spoken Spanish, and even with it covering two English tenses, I rarely hear the perfect. I don't know that I've ever heard the pluscuamperfecto aloud, and I have Mexican colleagues with loads of formal education.
Anyway, just a thought on your education. Glad you're working to pick up another tongue!
posted by migrantology at 10:58 AM on May 4, 2018
You should get competent with the pretérito and the imperfect, but beyond those, you're probably better served with other language capacities. I strongly recommend subjunctive practice as much as possible. Most complicated sentences in English in terms of tense are said relatively simply in Spanish, IME.
To wit: I speak Mexican/Central American Spanish. I use the subjunctive every time I speak--you can't get by as a competent speaker in Spanish without it. Especially, the present subjunctive is far more important than the tenses and odd constructions in the OP ("I had been wearing a hat"). The imperfective subjunctive is also more useful than the future tense (especially since you can ir a+ your way through actions in the future by forming it in present tense).
On the other hand, here the future and perfect tense are used much less often in Spanish than in English. The future isn't used much--it's either the present with future connotations ("mañana vamos para la playa") or the ir a+ version ("voy a ir por agua"). In addition, the perfect takes the place of the English pluperfect (pluscuamperfecto in Spanish) in almost all instances of spoken Spanish, and even with it covering two English tenses, I rarely hear the perfect. I don't know that I've ever heard the pluscuamperfecto aloud, and I have Mexican colleagues with loads of formal education.
Anyway, just a thought on your education. Glad you're working to pick up another tongue!
posted by migrantology at 10:58 AM on May 4, 2018
Best answer: Its very nuanced verb system is, imo, the glory of the Spanish language. It's complicated compared to English but ultimately very logical and allows one to articulate questions of time and degrees of reality with admirable precision.
The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice from Passport Books is pretty good, both with grammatical explanations of usage and offering thorough exercises to practice. But it might duplicate what you already have.
So you might also want to have a look at a reference grammar -- as opposed to a teaching grammar -- which will go into discussion of usage issues at a much deeper level. I recall A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin being good but there are others. One concept to watch for that will help clear up some usage questions is that of aspect, which is different from tense but very related and may not be addressed in beginning grammars. Tense choice is often not a question of some objective feature of what you are talking about but the relations between events that you want to bring out. It's interpretive choice about what you wish to conceive as continuous and what as punctual events, which come down to relations of aspect.
One thing I did when learning Spanish was work with a verb conjugation app that allowed me to drill all the forms -- including all the irregular forms -- to my heart's content. You type in the target form in response to a prompt. This wouldn't address proper usage at all, per se, but it puts conjugations on the tip of your tongue so the problem of proper verb forms doesn't interfere with the task of selecting when to use the various moods and tenses. This was a while ago, so I can't recommend a particular app, but look for something that has a lot of verbs in its database and lets you drill by verb conjugation type as well as by mood and tense.
Also, I second FSI, though not particularly for verbs; it's just an all around great way to get the sound of the language into one's head and get totally on top of the relation between orthography and phonetics. Read the explanations and do as much of the audio-lingual drills as you can!
Hope that helps! Remember that the verb system is all very logical and will click at some point.
posted by bertran at 11:44 PM on May 4, 2018
The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice from Passport Books is pretty good, both with grammatical explanations of usage and offering thorough exercises to practice. But it might duplicate what you already have.
So you might also want to have a look at a reference grammar -- as opposed to a teaching grammar -- which will go into discussion of usage issues at a much deeper level. I recall A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin being good but there are others. One concept to watch for that will help clear up some usage questions is that of aspect, which is different from tense but very related and may not be addressed in beginning grammars. Tense choice is often not a question of some objective feature of what you are talking about but the relations between events that you want to bring out. It's interpretive choice about what you wish to conceive as continuous and what as punctual events, which come down to relations of aspect.
One thing I did when learning Spanish was work with a verb conjugation app that allowed me to drill all the forms -- including all the irregular forms -- to my heart's content. You type in the target form in response to a prompt. This wouldn't address proper usage at all, per se, but it puts conjugations on the tip of your tongue so the problem of proper verb forms doesn't interfere with the task of selecting when to use the various moods and tenses. This was a while ago, so I can't recommend a particular app, but look for something that has a lot of verbs in its database and lets you drill by verb conjugation type as well as by mood and tense.
Also, I second FSI, though not particularly for verbs; it's just an all around great way to get the sound of the language into one's head and get totally on top of the relation between orthography and phonetics. Read the explanations and do as much of the audio-lingual drills as you can!
Hope that helps! Remember that the verb system is all very logical and will click at some point.
posted by bertran at 11:44 PM on May 4, 2018
Best answer: You can find exercises closer to what I think you are after for the crucial imperfect / simple past distinction by googling preterito imperfecto ejercicios. This one looks pretty standard. Notice they are little stories, rather than single sentences, 'cause it's at the narrative level that the choice is really made.
posted by bertran at 12:23 AM on May 5, 2018
posted by bertran at 12:23 AM on May 5, 2018
Response by poster: Thanks, all really useful answers. I've bought a copy of The Ultimate Spanish Verb Review and Practice , a particularly verby version of the recommendation from bertran's first comment; and the idea of just googling for specific exercises will be useful if I need more on top of what that provides.
Interesting comments, migrantology - but at the moment I'm after something very specific - the main thrust of my Spanish learning is through evening classes, and we've been through all these tenses in quick succession in the past few months, and they're all swilling around a bit in my head, not quite learnt. So I really want to try and consolidate at least some of that. When classes start again in September, I think we'll dive into the subjunctive, and I'm happy to wait until then to do it with a little handholding, and dedicate lots of time to it then :) Good to know I can so do much with present tense & ir a.
posted by penguin pie at 4:04 AM on May 19, 2018
Interesting comments, migrantology - but at the moment I'm after something very specific - the main thrust of my Spanish learning is through evening classes, and we've been through all these tenses in quick succession in the past few months, and they're all swilling around a bit in my head, not quite learnt. So I really want to try and consolidate at least some of that. When classes start again in September, I think we'll dive into the subjunctive, and I'm happy to wait until then to do it with a little handholding, and dedicate lots of time to it then :) Good to know I can so do much with present tense & ir a.
posted by penguin pie at 4:04 AM on May 19, 2018
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posted by penguin pie at 4:08 PM on May 3, 2018