KS3 · Spanish · Year 9
Past celebrations: -er and -ir verbs imperfect tense
Past routines and past events: imperfect tense
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use the preterite and imperfect tenses to talk about celebrations in the past.
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Past celebrations: -er and -ir verbs imperfect tense: slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can use the preterite and imperfect tenses to talk about celebrations in the past.
Key learning points
- Revisiting vocabulary often helps to move the words from your short-term to your long-term memory.
- For something completed in the past, we use the preterite tense, e.g. 'serví '- 'I served', 'serviste' - 'you served'.
- To talk about something that used to happen repeatedly in the past, we use the imperfect tense.
- To mean 'I' remove the endings and add -ía. For 'you' add -ías and for 'she, he, it' add -ía.
Words to know
- preterite tense
- tense used for events completed in the past
- imperfect tense
- tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past
Common mistakes
It does not matter whether I use the preterite or the imperfect as both refer to the past.
To talk about something completed in the past, we use the preterite tense. However, to talk about something that happened repeatedly in the past, with the meaning 'used to', we use the imperfect tense.
For parents, carers and teachers
- The teacher might choose to show students a short video about Mexico.