Spanish 1 Bricks and MortarI. Subject Pronouns-

Begin by learning the subject pronouns really, really well. Don’t skim past them with a “that’s easy” attitude. If you get the subject pronouns down, down, down verb conjugation will make more sense as you move along.

A subject pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used as the subject of a verb.A pronoun is a word that can be substituted for a noun.

In English subject pronouns are I, You, He, She, We, TheyAnd here is a chart showing what they are in Spanish

Now, you might wonder why we group them like this in a 2 column, 3 line chart. Why do we have he, she and the formal form of You all in the same square? This is because el, ella, and Ud. all take the same VERB CONJUGATION. More about that later. For now, remember, always use this form of chart to learn subject pronouns and later verbs. You will thank Sra. Kilburn later if you do this. You will see it in other forms, but stick with this form.

Use this quizlet set to get the subject pronouns down. Remember, you’ll need to know for example which subject pronoun would take the place of “Jorge y Yo”. So in English “John and I” could be substituted with “We”. Even once you’ve learned that “Nosotros” is “We”, you want to be able to get to “Nosotros” directly from “Jorge y Yo”. Once this becomes automatic, verb conjugation will make much more sense. Here’s a quizlet set to practice the subject pronouns:

https://quizlet.com/87867994/flashcards

And practice this,If you are handed a blank chart, 2 X 3, like this;

You want to get to where you can without hesitation fill it out like this:

Yo Nosotros/as

Tu Vosotros/as

EllaElUd. (Usted)

EllasEllosUds. (Ustedes)

A good way to practice is to write the subject pronouns (there are 10) on cards, shuffle them and practice placing them on the chart. Check yourself, then repeat until you have no doubts.

II. Verb Conjugation

A verb is an action word. I run on Mondays. Which word is the action word? Run. Run is the verb.But if I were taking about what she does, I couldn’t use the same form of the verb. I couldn’t say “She run..”, I’d have to say “She runs…” with an s on the end. Spanish uses different forms of the verb depending on the Subject pronoun that verb is used with. Luckily, and unlike English, there are patterns to the way the verb changes. And this is what we mean when we talk about conjugation.

Here are the patterns:

● First, do you notice that you are looking at three 2x3 charts? Just notice that and hold onto that awareness.

● Second, you see above the charts AR, ER, and IR. We are going to talk about what that refers to. All verbs in Spanish end in either AR, IR, or ER in their infinitive form. What does “infinitive form mean?” A verb in it’s infinitive form is a verb that hasn’t been conjugated. What???!!!

● Third, Infinitives. Back to how we talk about running in English for a moment. If we refer to the verb “to run”, we are referring to the infinitive form of the verb. But we know it is not correct to say “I to run” or “She to run”. No. “To run” becomes simply “run” when used with the subject pronoun “I” but becomes “runs” when used with the subject pronoun “She”. In Spanish “correr” is the infinitive. It ends in ER so is called “an ER verb”. You know many infinitives:

Hablar - to talkEscuchar - to listenBailar - to danceVivir - to liveComer - to eatBeber - to drink

Do you see that they all end in either AR, ER, or IR? All Spanish verbs end in AR, ER, or IR in their infinitive form.

III. Conjugating AR verbs

We will first learn and practice to conjugate AR verbs.

What did we do to HABLAR to conjugate it? We dropped the AR ending and we added o,as,a,amos, ais, an.

● Notice that the subject pronouns el, ella, usted all take the ending “a”, and ellos, ellas, ustedes all take the ending “an”. That is why we work with the 2x3 chart.

● Now look at the AR verb endings chart.

Do you see how with just this chart you can figure out how to conjugate any regular AR verb in present tense with any subject?

Practice Activity AR verb conjugation

1. Write the 6 AR verb endings on 6 squares of paper. Practice putting them correctly into the blank chart just like you practiced the subject pronouns.

2. Check your placement. Then mentally run through the subject pronouns that correspond to each place in the chart.For example, point to “o” and say to yourself “Yo” . Point to “as” and say to yourself “Tu”. Start associating the endins with the Subject Pronoun.3. Pick up cards, shuffle, repeat.4. Do this over and over until you are solid. You do not want to work through all these steps quickly. You want to lay each foundation solidly, then move to the next.

Believe Sra. Kilburn, slow and solid will make a big difference!

After you get this down, go practice your skill with this quizlet set:

https://quizlet.com/26110662/flashcards

Or quiz yourself on spanishspanish.com

http://www.spanishspanish.com/verb/present_ar_practice_web.html

Here’s a fun student made video about Verb Conjugation

Get your conjugation on!

IV. ER Verb Conjugation

What did we do to COMER? We dropped the ER ending and we added o,es, e, emos, eis, and en.

● Notice that the subject pronouns el, ella, usted all take the ending “e”, and ellos, ellas, ustedes all take the ending “an”. That is why we work with the 2x3 chart.

● Now look at the ER verb endings chart.

If you had the chart without the subject pronouns in it, you could still figure out how to conjugate any regular ER verb in the present tense.

Practice Activity ER verb conjugation

2. Write the 6 ER verb endings on 6 squares of paper. Practice putting them correctly into the blank chart just like you practiced the subject pronouns.

2. Check your placement. Then mentally run trough the subject pronouns that correspond to each place in the chart.For example, point to “o” and say to yourself “Yo” . Point to “as” and say to yourself “Tu”. Start associating the endings with the Subject Pronoun.3. Pick up cards, shuffle, repeat.4. Do this over and over until you are solid. You do not want to work through all these steps quickly. You want to lay each foundation solidly, then move to the next.

After you get this down, go practice your skill with this quizlet set:

https://quizlet.com/4261534/flashcards

V. IR Verb Conjugation

Practice Activity IR verb conjugation

3. Write the 6 IR verb endings on 6 squares of paper. Practice putting them correctly into the blank chart just like you practiced the subject pronouns.

2. Check your placement. Then mentally run through the subject pronouns that correspond to each place in the chart.For example, point to “o” and say to yourself “Yo” . Point to “as” and say to yourself “Tu”. Start associating the endings with the Subject Pronoun.3. Pick up cards, shuffle, repeat.4. Do this over and over until you are solid. You do not want to work through all these steps quickly. You want to lay each foundation solidly, then move to the next.

Believe Sra. Kilburn, slow and solid will make a big difference!

After you get this down, go practice your skill with this quizlet set. Because ER and IR endings overlap it is helpful to practice ER and IR verbs intermixed: (link on next page)

https://quizlet.com/4407955/spanish-er-ir-verbs-conjugated-flash-cards/

All Regular Verbs Present Tense Activities

VI And last but not least, there are irregular verbs (meaning they don’t follow the patterns to a T). We are only going to worry about the verbs that are used very frequently. You will recognize these verbs right away. See if you can see why they are classified as “irregular”

Now you are ready to practice AR, ER, and IR together. Here are some practice activities that will help you:http://www.studyspanish.com/practice/regverb1.htm

https://conjuguemos.com/activity.php?language=spanish&id=1&source=public&type=verbs

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=spanish-verb-quiz-4-regular-verbs-in-present-tense

VII Common Irregular Verbs Present Tense

You have seen and worked with these verbs all your years at Joyner, but you just didn’t know that they’d be called Irregular Verbs Present tense in the High School world. Look at the following charts.

Can you tell why they are called “irregular”? Can you tell which subject pronoun would be implied by

each one? (el, ella, and Ud. are know in context. Same with ellos, ellas, and Uds.)

Ir = to goVoy Vamos

Vas Vais

Va Van

Sr. Jordan has a series of wonderful short videos that help on all these subjects. If one of the subjects is tripping you up, look up that topic in this series of videos:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B8SkfuOwNyd2aE9ZSmhyRUdLeTQ