In Spanish, just like in English, there is more than just one “past tense”. Two of the most important ones for a Spanish student are the preterite and the imperfect.
Here’s a video about preterite vs imperfect from Spring Spanish, a YouTube channel I co-founded:
It’s much easier to listen to tons of Spanish where the preterite and the imperfect are used, and to learn some chunks used by native speakers that contain the imperfect and preterite. Learning and using these chunks saves you a lot of uncertainty: after all, you know they’re correct, so you don’t have to come up with the verb ending – or choose between preterite and imperfect – at all!
And here are some more chunks with the Spanish imperfect (from the video mentioned above):
Learning chunks like this has a much bigger impact on your Spanish fluency than merely learning conjugation tables. The more chunks like this you hear, and the more you learn them by heart, the easier it becomes to speak. It’s the easiest and best way to learn Spanish.
In my book on language learning, (and in this article with my best tips for learning Spanish)I mention using spaced repetition and flashcards to imprint Spanish chunks on your brain so they roll off the tongue in conversations.
This works especially well with verb conjugations, so it’s definitely worth a try. I recommend you create so-called “cloze cards”: fill-in-the-blank flashcards.
FRONT:
¿___________ (Did I tell you that) estaba enfermo?
BACK:
¿Te conté que estaba enfermo?
(Did I tell you that I was sick?)
This way, you have the context of the sentence, which should tell you whether to use preterite or imperfect. You’ll also automatically practice the full chunk te conté que (did I tell you that), not just a random verb conjugation. AND when you learn chunks in context, your brain usually finds it easier to memorize and retrieve chunks when speaking.
Nothing but advantages!
I. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate preterite or imperfect tense of the verb in parentheses. Choose from the following three options for each blank:
C. Both preterite and imperfect could fit
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Knowing when to use the Spanish Preterite vs Imperfect might be hard when you’re just starting out learning Spanish. However, observing a lot of Spanish conversations and seeing the difference in action will help you distinguish between the two more easily.
Once you can tell the difference when other people speak, and you memorize some of the chunks you hear, it’ll become even easier for you to use the correct tense yourself.
For more info about chunking, I recommend you download the free Spanish Chunking Starter Pack. It contains tons of chunking examples, an in-depth chunking tutorial that shows you exactly how to learn Spanish through Conversation Based Chunking (without memorizing word lists and grammar rules), and comes with recommended resources for where to find useful chunks.
