La Clase de Español

[the_other_sandy]

Q. What's worse than an exam on the preterite tense, or an exam on the imperfect tense?

A. An exam on the preterite tense and the imperfect tense that involves combining both tenses in multiple essays on topics I don't have anything to say about in English.

The stupid thing is that I know when to use each tense and I know the endings of each tense, but when I try to write with them, I keep mixing them up (using the third person singular ending of the preterite tense when I meant to use the third person singular ending of the imperfect tense, and that sort of thing). I don't know why I can't keep the two tenses separate in my head, but it's been a real problem for me. Based on the test grades, I'm not the only one. I just got my first B on a test since I started studying Spanish again. Granted, it was a high B (88%), but I'm still disappointed because most of the mistakes I made were due to mixing up my tenses when I should know better.

And we're learning two more verb tenses in this chapter.

::headdesk::

Comments

[libra-traveller.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I hope you can get those tenses straightened out for the exams. You can do it.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can... 8-)

[mrstinkles.livejournal.com]

Well, I consider myself pretty decent when it comes to English grammar, but I no idea what the preterite tense is.

*grabs dictionary*

Oh, is it something like "It appears that Jared & Sandy had been married sometime last summer?" ;)

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

I think that's past perfect. Preterite tense is simple past tense--something you did in the past that's completed now, or something you did at a specific time in the past, like "I went to Florida on vacation last summer."

My problem is that some of the verb endings of these two tenses are very similar, so they throw me, especially since we've hardly done any reading assignments with these two tenses. I do much better when I can see the verbs used in a context other than the one sentence examples in the textbook. I learned English grammar just by reading a lot as a kid.