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Learning as a chunk


Expressing ideas with simple sentences (e.g., Juan estudió 'Juan studied') may not be as challenging as using complex sentences (e.g., Juan habría estudiado más si hubiera tenido tiempo. 'Juan would have studied more if he had had time.') 

Even though you may know the two tenses called for in the previous example, you still may like to have a strategy for using the two of them in sync.
Rachel knew how to form the conditional perfect habría estudiado and the pluperfect subjunctive hubiera tenido.  However, in order to attain relatively automatic and functional use of the two forms together, she used the strategy of “drill and kill,” assisted in this case by a tutor.  She simply produced sentence after sentence with verbs in each of these two tenses as one single chunk, rather than drilling each verb form separately.

“This phrase I learned as a chunk or as a structure in and of itself…throwing in different verbs…different meanings.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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