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Playing with verbs

Verbs follow patterns of conjugation according to the person(s) you’re conjugating them for and the tense you wish to use.  Just as the honeycomb inside a beehive follows a familiar and predictable pattern, conjugation patterns are also predictable for many verbs.

You may already be familiar with the patterns of regular present tense verbs in Spanish. Organizing these patterns into easily understandable charts can help them make sense of and remember their verbs.

But just like the pattern of veins inside the leaves on a tree, some verbs have additional patterns aside from just changing their endings. Such verbs are called “stem-changing” because they require a vowel change in the verb stem (the part that comes before the –ar, er, or –ir in the infinitive form).  Playing with conjugation charts by organizing and/or highlighting the verbs or drawing lines around the stems that change, may work for you too as a strategy for remembering some of the challenging forms.

Learning the verb conjugations for all persons

Organizing your verb chart according to what works for you

Remembering stem-changing verbs

Thinking of a flower stem

Drawing boots an remembering "go-go" verbs

Identifying similar conjugation patterns

Circling or highlighting the forms that are different

 

 

 

 

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