How to treat the rules: the verb-endings

In the very beginning of my learning I decided (or should I say “was forced”) to learn the verb endings of the most common tenses in Spanish. I really thought that this would boost my learning and was the ultimate secret to pass my tests. And I really thought that by some miracle I’d understand all these weird endings, put them at the end of a verb and wouldn’t make any errors anymore in no-time.

So poor Ramses would sit in his room, alone and for days in a row, memorizing the verb endings and writing them down in his notebook. It hurt in the end (my head, my right hand, my a**) and I still didn’t know when to use what tense. Heck, I even failed for that part of the test where I memorized everything for. From then on I hated the teacher and her tests. However, for the next test I decided to use the same rote memorazation method. And then something happened.

I went to Spain, figured out in some way what tense to use when and because of my hardcore memorazation I could put them in practice right away. “How the heck did this happen?” I asked myself. Well, it was simply a combination of things. I used rote memorazation (really, one of the worst methods out there) and was later able to make them logical for me and link them to a feeling (i.e. “Using the indefenido here is just plain weird, it has to be the imperfecto“). Of course, this all was very artificial in the beginning, as all crammed things are artificial and sucky in the beginning. But because only a part of the “how-and-when-to-use-what-tense”-learning was artificial and the later part was a pure natural approach, it became natural after a while (in other words: an automatism).

Now, there are quite some anti-grammar-cramming people out there (including me. Yes, still). So why the heck would I tell you guys this story? Simple: I think it could come in handy for the beginners mentioning this. So yes. I, Ramses, hereby derclare that you, as a complete beginner, a complete n00b, should learn those endings. Learn the forms, learn the names of the tenses, until you dream about them (as soon as you’re having nightmares you know you’ve gone too far, hehe). The purpose of all this? Boosting your progress and giving you a better understanding of how the Spanish language works.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a systematical approach for learning the verb endings. I simply learned them by sitting down for hours and hours, pick a tense and start analyzing and writing down the different forms. The only thigk I found necessary is to just pick one tense at a time and comparing the -ar, -er and -ir forms so that I wouldn’t mess them up. After I learned about five tenses, I’d start a reviewing period of a day (even better: use a few days) to refresh the stuff. Then I’d start learning some more tenses and review them after a while together with the tenses I learned before. It’s tedious, but it works – although you still don’t know what to use when.

Again: I don’t encourage you guys to cram grammar, but to get a basic understanding of the verbs in Spanish I think this is the best way of reaching that. And although I didn’t find a good – systematical – approach yet, I’ll be looking out for it and experimenting with some things I already have in mind.

Tagged as: how to, spanish grammar