From the category archives:

Gramática

Pasado del Subjuntivo – Ejercicio 2

March 5, 2010

Spanish Past Subjunctive
This is the second exercise on the Spanish past subjunctive.  It parallels Exercise 2 of the Spanish present subjunctive, so that you can continue applying the equation set out in Pasado del Subjuntivo – Lección 1.  By now you should know many of the Spanish keywords and understand the structure, so it’s a [...]

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Spanish sentence structure equals flexibility

February 27, 2010

The surprising flexibility of Spanish sentences
English sentence structure is not completely set in stone, but it’s far more rigid than that of Spanish.
English speakers say “I go to the movie theater,” and in more poetic fashion may come up with something like “To the movie theater I go.”  The latter is far less common, however, [...]

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Pasado del Subjuntivo – Lección 1

February 26, 2010

Spanish Past Subjunctive – Lesson 1 (with Exercise 1)
In Lesson 1 on the Spanish Present Subjunctive, you learned that you can command a significant portion of the subjunctive through the employment of a simple formula:
Key word + que + subordinate clause w/subjunctive
This formula also works for the past-subjunctive, so without reinventing the wheel, we’re going [...]

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Pretérito e Imperfecto – Ejercicio 2

February 21, 2010

Spanish Preterit and Imperfect
Below you will find Ejercicio 2, which deals with some interesting twists that occur in the preterit and imperfect for the verbs saber, conocer, querer, and poder. You can find a full explanation of these usages in the previous lesson on the Spanish preterit and imperfect tenses.  It would be well [...]

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Ser y Estar – Ejercicio 2

February 20, 2010

Repetition is key to Spanish-language education
This second exercise contrasting ser with estar will reinforce the distinctions made in the first ser-vs-estar lesson.  You will benefit by working through the same exercises until you are able to do them perfectly without looking at the answers.
Ser vs estar – Ejercicio 2
 
 

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Presente del Subjuntivo – Ejercicio 6

February 19, 2010

Spanish Present Subjunctive
Here is yet another exercise on the Spanish Present Subjunctive.  If you make a list from all six exercises of the possible “palabras claves,” you will have a base for dominating this area of the Spanish language.  You should print the worksheets and fill them out as many times as it takes to [...]

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Inserting Spanish accent marks and punctuation into text documents, including e-mail messages

February 16, 2010

Recently, I received a question about how to insert Spanish accent marks and specialized Spanish punctuation marks into written text. For those of you who did not follow that post and comment, here is the answer I gave:
The Internet provides lots of information on how to set up your keyboard for other languages.  In addition, [...]

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Preterit vs. Imperfect

February 13, 2010

Spanish Preterit vs. Imperfect
The Spanish language has two simple past tenses—the preterit and the imperfect.  The preterit is used to express completed past actions, with emphasis on a completed beginning or ending.  The imperfect is used for ongoing past actions and actions that are repeated in the past.  But these general statements do not adequately [...]

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Presente del Subjuntivo – Ejercicio 5

February 12, 2010

Hola amigos!  Seguimos adelante con nuestro estudio del presente del subjuntivo en español.  Aquí les doy el Ejercicio 5, que tiene un formato levemente diferente que el de los otros ejercicios que han visto hasta ahora.  Espero que lo disfruten.
We continue with our study of the present subjunctive in Spanish.  Here is Exercise 5, which [...]

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Ser vs Estar – Lesson 1

February 6, 2010

Ser y Estar
In English, there is only one verb for “to be.” In Spanish, two to-be verbs exist—ser and estar—but they are not interchangeable. In some sentence constructions, you may use either one of them, but the meaning always changes.
This lesson covers the various usages of ser and estar and gives examples of each. [...]

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