Published at: 09:01 am - Friday January 20 2012
Generally, when a person makes the decision to learn Spanish they will usually start learning the basics at a frantic pace in their eagerness to speak a new language, then they will slow a little as things get a little more complex and finally they will suddenly come to a grinding halt when the time comes to master Spanish verb conjugation! So…why is learning the conjugation of Spanish verbs, and irregular verbs in particular, so difficult? English, although difficult for many foreigners to master, is surprisingly forgiving when it comes to verb conjugation so why is Spanish so different?
To explain, if we look at the verb ‘to eat’, we would say in English; I, you and we, eat, and he, she or it eats. However, in Spanish we would say Yo como (I eat), tu comes (you eat – singular), el / ella come (he/she/it eats), nosotros comemos (we eat), vosotros comeis (you all eat – plural), ellos / ellas comen (they eat). As you can see, in Spanish there are six different conjugations depending upon the number and the doer of the action whereas there are only two in English.
In short, mastery of the Spanish language can only be truly accomplished when a student has a complete understanding of verbs, tenses and verb conjugation and this has been achieved for countless years with the use of a Spanish verb conjugator, which was simply a book that contained the most commonly used verbs and their many various conjugated forms. Although extremely helpful, verb conjugation books still only contained the required information that had to be read over and over again until memorized. A time consuming and unpleasant task for many students but necessary none-the-less and unfortunately this is why many students give up any hopes they may have of learning Spanish to a good fluent level.
Making the task of learning Spanish verbs simpler was never going to be easy as rewriting the Spanish language was not feasible! What was feasible however, was looking into the possibility of trying to change learning methods in such a way that memorization of verbs became much easier and as a result mastery of conjugation would be achieved much sooner with a lot less stress.
The way people remember things varies from one person to the next and that is why the verb conjugation book only ever contains the required information and not a method of learning that information as this is left to the student to devise their own method of learning but what has evolved in recent years, that could possibly make the conjugation book redundant, are software programs designed to help speed up the learning process by improving memorization.
Initially, these programs were computerized versions of the books which never really improved the situation for students. However, over time these software programs have gradually become much more interactive and have progressively improved to the point nowadays that a program can be adjusted to match a student’s specific training needs and offer constant feedback on a student’s progress, strengths and weaknesses all of which improves the learning experience and the speed at which the conjugation of verbs is mastered.
Does this advancement mean the end of the Spanish verb conjugation book? I don’t think so…there will always be a need for a written verb book, but as a primary learning tool its days may certainly be numbered!
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