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Spanish - verb conjugation tips | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| mitcht Newbie Australia Joined 3742 days ago 32 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 14 29 August 2014 at 6:47am | IP Logged |
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Does anyone have any advice on how to best internalise verb conjugation. I would say my
Spanish is at an intermediate level but i still have some issues conjugating verbs naturally in conversation. When i write i don't really have the same issue as I have a bit more time to think it through. Many thanks, Mitch 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 14 04 September 2014 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
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Book an hour with a tutor on iTalki (preferably the meanest one you can find). Prepare
some topic to talk about, and ask that tutor to correct you EVERY. SINGLE. TIME you misconjugate a verb (make sure they do not tell you the correct form). By the end of the hour you will hate yourself to bits and pieces, but you will get better at automatically producing the correct verb forms in Spanish. If an hour is not enough, do it another three or four times for good measure. Producing the correct patterns in speech is a sign that you're still thinking through your conjugation paradigms. "Oh, it's ella, so... it must be habla, right?" To make this sort of thing automatic you simply need more practice with that grammar point. After a few hours of drilling it into your head you'll be fine. Edited by tarvos on 04 September 2014 at 6:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 3 of 14 04 September 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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Do Michel Thomas Advanced and, more important, do FSI Basic.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 14 04 September 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged |
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Get more input to internalize the conjugations properly.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 5 of 14 04 September 2014 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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First, welcome to the forum, mitcht. Everyone has given you good advice. Follow it- all of it. You need to practice all these aspects of a language in order to internalize it. I'll second James29 and recommend that you hit the FSI Spanish Basic Course hot and heavy. Internalizing Spanish conjugations isn't going to happen overnight. After some months of drills, speaking and being corrected, listening to comprehensible input and reading comprehensible input, all during the same time frame, that should help you tremendously. Be prepared, it's going to take a while. If you want something to become automatic, you have to practice it, a lot. Edited by iguanamon on 04 September 2014 at 9:36pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mitcht Newbie Australia Joined 3742 days ago 32 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 14 05 September 2014 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for all of the advice guys. Funnily enough I actually came across the FSI course
over the past week or so and have started to work through the BASIC course - this seemed preferred to the programmatic. I wish I had come across this when I was starting out as it appears far more thorough than anything else I've seen. With that in mind, is there a consensus on how far the course will take you towards fluency? I actually did go through the first Michel Thomas course when I took up the language a year or so ago but didn't make it through the advanced course as I could no longer handle the students. Perhaps I'll go back and suck it up. Also, for me at least, I found that the course provided a solid foundation to learn from but didn't go far enough as to internalise things. I also have been using italki for a little while now after having my prior tutor move back to Spain. The real test of my Spanish will come in a couple of months when I'm heading to stay with my girlfriends family for a while. Whilst they speak enough English to communicate with me it would be nice to not be reliant on everyone switching languages for me this time. Sadly, I rarely speak Spanish with her at home as we normally revert to English pretty quickly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 14 05 September 2014 at 8:24am | IP Logged |
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You have to know all 101 conjugation types,
Spanish Verb Encyclopedia may help you: .http://www.verbolog.com/paradig1.htm http://www.verbolog.com/paradig2.htm As is the case with Swedish, and Latin, don't memorize the verbs in their infinitive form only, you have to include the conjugated form, because 45 % of all Spanish verbs are irregular or semirregular (like the 1st three from the lower list): cuento, contar = tell siento, sentir = feel defiendo, defender = defend dependo, depender = depend etc 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 14 05 September 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged |
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Most people who cannot use conjugations in a conversation need to drill them better either as separate forms or in sentences or both. So:
1.make an SRS deck with the common conjugations, irregular ones and the ones you keep having trouble with.something like front: hacer (present) back: hago,haces,hace,hacemos,hacéin,hacen works pretty fine for me. 2.lots of input. hearing and seeing the correct conjugation in context many times helps a lot both with creating the correct verb form and utilizing it in the proper context 3.focus on conjugation during your practice of any kind. Make your own sentences, speak to yourself, do exercises in your coursebook and so on. as long as you reinforce your correct use of conjugations, you are moving forward. Just don't let mistakes slip regularily "because this exercise is on something different" 4.when speaking Spanish, people will forgive you a lot of conjugation mutilations and other mistakes as well, as long as you obviously understand and can be understood without much trouble. Especially as even the Spaniards claiming to speak English aren't usually too good at it. The trouble is that it tempts you not to study during your stay as you have too little time for taking your verb conjugation book out of your luggage. But you will progress much better if you remember just a few things you are unsure about/don't know during the day and look them up in just a few minutes. The FSI will take you pretty far but you should keep on mind it is an older course and needs to be supplemented, just as any course, with lots of native input. Lots. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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