KS3 · Spanish · Year 9
Past routines: -er and -ir verbs imperfect tense
Past routines and past events: imperfect tense
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/11
Your learning goal
I can use modal and imperfect tense verbs to describe my own and other people's past routines.
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Past routines: -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 modal and imperfect tense verbs to describe my own and other people's past routines.
Key learning points
- The -y at the end of an English word often changes to -ía or -ia in Spanish. e.g. energy - energía.
- Words ending in -ía stress the final syllable and need an accent to show that, e.g. energía.
- Words ending in -ia stress the penultimate syllable and need no accent, e.g. ciencia.
- The verbs 'querer', 'poder' and 'deber' are modal verbs and are often followed by an infinitive.
- To talk about something that used to happen repeatedly in the past, we use the imperfect tense.
Words to know
- final syllable stress
- pronouncing the last syllable more heavily than other syllables in a word
- penultimate syllable stress
- pronouncing the second-to-last syllable more heavily than other syllables in a word
- modal verb
- verb of necessity or possibility used with a 2nd verb in infinitive e.g. must, can, want
- imperfect tense
- tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past
Common mistakes
All words ending in -ia must have an accent.
Words ending in a vowel usually stress the penultimate syllable. Words ending in -ía have stress on the final syllable, so they need an accent e.g., energía. Words ending in -ia stress the penultimate syllable, so no accent is needed e.g. ciencia.
For parents, carers and teachers
- For activity A1, the teacher may prefer to have students compete against each other rather than against the teacher.