3 Easy, Proven Tips to Simplify the Preterite vs Imperfect

I'm gonna go ahead and say the preterite vs imperfect is the worst part of Spanish 2.

It's probably the hardest thing students have faced up to that point. And then they get to Spanish 3 and meet the nightmare known as the subjunctive. 😂

I have a few suggestions to make teaching preterite vs imperfect palatable and not pure horror.

Teach the Preterite vs Imperfect Separately First

Please, dear lord, do not throw two past tenses at students simultaneously.

Their brains might explode. 🤯

Really take your time (and then take a little longer) teaching the preterite. It's kind of a monster of a verb tense.

I break the preterite down by verb type:

regular -AR verbs
-car, -gar, -zar verbs
regular -ER & -IR verbs
"Y" verbs
stem-changing verbs
review: -ER, -IR, "Y", and stem-changing verbs
review: -AR, -car, -gar, -zar, -ER, -IR, "Y", and stem-changing verbs
irregular verbs

I explicitly teach students how they know if a verb is a "Y" verb, and how they know if it's stem-changing.

I also make sure each lesson includes previously taught verb forms, so students don't forget what they learned yesterday or a few days ago.

And then after getting through the preterite, the imperfect is an easy dream. It takes like ~~6 seconds~~ a week to teach. 😂

This way, by the time I get to teaching the differences between these two past tenses - students already know the endings. It's that much easier. 🙂

Teach an Acronym

Help students remember reasons for when to use the preterite and when to use the imperfect.

I use BOIST (preterite) and UTOAD (imperfect).

I know these are weird acronyms, but... that's what I came up with. 🤷‍♀️

Preterite

B - beginning or ending of an action

O - one time

I - interruption

S - series of events

T - transitions

Imperfect

U - used to

T - time

O - ongoing events

A - age

D - description

I teach one or two reasons per day, and over the course of a little over a week students learn all the reasons.

End with a Project

I end teaching the preterite vs imperfect with a project.

I want students to be able to take ownership, create their own meaning, and teach each other.

I give students a group project where they have to decide how to translate past tense sentences into Spanish, write them on large paper, and then teach their peers their sentences and why they chose either the preterite or imperfect.