Tips for Learning Spanish Verbs
Looking around at what I have in my room here I see a book called Portuguese Verbs.
In it I can read about commands, imperatives, affirmative, imperative verbs ending in this, that and the other, pages and pages of irregular verbs,conjunctions, verbs expressing desire, doubt and volition. It's very intimidating, all those different endings. In fact, when studying the romance languages, I think verbs are the biggest bugbear. Having spent a lot of time trying to learn verb tables, I'm convinced that it can't be done.
At the very best, you can have a book like this on Spanish verbs and keep it in your bathroom to leaf through while you're on the john, but it's impossible to memorize, in my opinion. What should you do? I poked into LingQ, because I haven't been studying Spanish recently. I saved a few verbs and, lo and behold, amongst the dictionaries we have access to is one called SpanishDict.com and it's amazing. Click on any verb and you will see the conjugation, you will see examples, you'll see a little video and, of course, you'll see the meaning. If you do enough reading and listening in Spanish, you're attentive to the language and you occasionally review this kind of explanation, (but rely largely on repeated exposure in different contexts), you will eventually be able to get that natural sense for Spanish verbs and you can master them.
I shouldn't use the word ‘master' because I don't believe that's a word that applies in language learning, but the more familiar you become with Spanish verbs, the better your Spanish will become. You won't have to worry what the form of the third-person singular past tense is and so forth when you use the verb; it will start to come out naturally. So my advice on Spanish verbs is lots of reading and listening, and if you happen to be at LingQ, select SpanishDict as your dictionary of choice.
Even if you get a quick explanation of the verb via our User Hints or via Google Translate, open up SpanishDict and every time you come across a verb quickly review the different conjugation endings. Don't try to memorize them, just go back to enjoying whatever content you're reading and, of course, listen to it.
