How Do You Conjugate The Preterite In Spanish? In English this tense is used to talk about actions that were completed in the past and it has the same use in Spanish. In English, the preterite is also known as the “simple past tense”. Click here to find out more and try out the method for free. Or if you prefer a more thorough explanation of the preterite vs imperfect in Spanish or just prefer to see it in print, scroll down and read on!īy the way, if you want to learn Spanish through stories, not rules, my top recommendation for language learners is my Uncovered courses, which teach you through StoryLearning®. In this article, we'll focus on the two most common past tense forms: the preterite vs imperfect in Spanish.īy the end of the post, you'll be able to clear the most common past tense road blocks and express yourself with ease.įor a quick walkthrough the past tenses in Spanish, you can check out this video from my Fluent Spanish Academy YouTube channel. Jumping back and forth between past tenses will not be as intuitive in Spanish as in your first language at first, but it can become easy with enough listening, reading, and speaking practice. You know dinner was underway when I arrived thanks to the “had been”.ĭifferent past tenses in Spanish do the same thing.They were already swimming when it started to rain (the “were” tells you that).Just by reading these sentences, you can tell what happened in what order. “They had been eating for thirty minutes already when I got there.”.“We were swimming when it started to rain.”.Look at the following sentences by way of example: “What do you mean there is more than one past tense?” is a common question and one I asked myself when I learned my first foreign language.īut did you know that English has multiple past tense forms as well?

If you're learning Spanish, figuring out which of the different past tense forms to use in each situation is one of the first major roadblocks you'll face.

Past tense spanish sentences