Spanish

The Present Tense

What is the present tense?

The present tense is always used to say either what you’re doing right now or to say what you do regularly, for example- ‘I sing every Tuesday’ or ‘I am singing’.

Whereas ‘I sing’ means that you do it regularly, ‘I am singing’ means that you are doing it right now.

How do I form the present?

In Spanish, there are three endings- ar, er and ir. In every tense that you’ll learn, we normally take off these endings and add others.

Each different sets of endings mean a different tense. Let’s go-

The endings

People AR ER IR

yo -o -o -o

tú -as -es -es

él/ella/usted -a -e -e

nosotros -amos -emos -imos

vosotros -áis -éis -ís

ellos/ellas/

ustedes

-an -en -en

Let’s try speaking it now.

‘jugar’ is the verb to play. To say ‘I play’, you must firstly take off the ‘-ar’ ending to give your stem, ‘jug-’

Now add the ‘I’ ending, which is ‘-o’

Jug- + -o = jugo I play/ I am playing

Just learn ’em!

Unfortunately, with every verb, you just have to learn each set of verbs and each set of endings. It’s tedious, but it’s useful if you want to speak fluent Spanish in the future.

Remember- don’t say the people unless you are emphasising. Emphasis is when you need to get the point across, like ‘I didn’t say it, she did!’

However, you need to say names.

I hope that helped!

Matthew Vernon

thefartydoctor@hotmail.co.uk

This PowerPoint was created by Matthew Vernon, email here.