How to get the Right Spanish Verb Conjugation

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How do you get the correct Spanish verb conjugation. What factors should you be aware of?

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Step 1

Spanish verbs depend on two major factors. The first is person. The second is tense. You need to know what these mean.
Step 2

To understand person, you need to know who is doing the action. This is the pronoun. In English it would be:

I, you (one person), he, she, it, we, you (more than one person, like "you guys" or "y'all"), they.
Step 3

Next you need to determine which tense is used. The most important tenses in Spanish are present, present progressive, simple past (preterite), and imperfect past, simple future, and conditional. There are other tenses as well.
Step 4

Present is "I speak". Present progressive is "I am speaking". Simple past is "I went". Imperfect is something that was repeated in the past. For example, "I used to speak" would imply that something happened more than once. In this case, the imperfect would be used. Simple future is "I will speak". Conditional is "I would speak".
Step 5

Find a list of conjugations. The best one is a book called, "501 Spanish Verbs". Now that you know the person and the tense, you can go to the various conjugation charts and it will tell you the exact conjugation. For your convenience at the end of this article there is a resource link to conjugation charts for the most widely used Spanish verbs.
Step 6

While we didn't actually conjugate any Spanish verbs here, we gave you the basics for knowing the keys on how to conjugate. It's up to you to use the conjugation chart. There is a link included in the article.

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