Teaching the Spanish Past Tenses - Part Three

Practical Exercise

Begin this practical exercise, which makes use of the chart we looked at last week, by writing on the board the following things that will make up a story told in the past.

So we’ll start with the first question. “Manuel PASEAR por la playa.” Okay, now, is this a photo or a movie? Some students see it as a picture and decide to use the imperfecto. Those who see it as a movie just have to ask “does the information have any contact with the present?” The answer is clearly no, because this happened the other day, this is a story in the past. So they ask a third question: is it a specific action in the past? If a student suggests that it is, just ask them “how long did it last?” As soon as the student realizes that question is impossible to answer, they’ll realize that there’s only one option: to use the imperfecto. So we’ve ended up reaching the same conclusion following two different routes, two different interpretations. I think that all this confirms that the system works.

The same system can be used for the next five units of information that will make up the story. No matter what the initial point of view of the students have, they’ll find that they need to continue using the imperfecto.

Things change however at number 7. Two simultaneous actions are occurring here: Manuel is walking and then suddenly he sees a 20€ bill on the ground. If we accept the fact that pasear is an action, then we have to make clear that we still don’t know how long it lasts, we just know the context during which something is going to happen, so the action pasear should be described in the imperfecto. The part about finding the 20€ bill though is different. The adverbial phrase de pronto lets us know that the action happens at a specific moment in the past, so the answer to the question “is this a specific action in the past?” can now be answered with “yes” which requires the use of the perfecto simple.

Something similar happens with the action of picking up the bill off the ground, going to the chiringuito, and ordering a beer, which all express specific actions at specific times occurring successively.

At this point, you can ask your students to write the complete story, connecting the elements as they feel necessary. The following is an example of a final version:

"El otro día Manuel paseaba por la playa, donde había mucha gente. Hacía mucho calor, y por eso Manuel tenía mucha sed, pero no tenía dinero para tomar algo en el chiringuito que había en la playa. Afortunadamente, mientras paseaba, Manuel vio un billete de 20 € en la arena, cogió el billete, fue al chiringuito y pidió una caña de cerveza muy fría".

Here you could also point out the fact that one of the functions of the perfecto simple is to present actions that happen at a specific time while the imperfecto is purely descriptive and contextual, in other words information that could be removed from the story without making a mess of it. You could simplify this notion by saying: “Manuel vio un billete en la playa, lo cogió, fue a un bar ya pidió una cerveza”, and the sentence still works without the side information. But if you just said “Manuel paseaba por la playa en la que había mucha gente, hacía mucho calor y Manuel no tenía dinero pero tenía mucha sed”, you’d be kind of like, okay, so what happened? That’s because the imperfecto verbs give us contextual information but not relevant actions that make the story progress.

I hope that this example has been useful and I suggest trying it out on your next A2 level Spanish class. See you next week!