KS4 · Spanish · Year 11

Pequeños grandes cambios: perfect and present tenses

Travel and tourism: lugares y personas famosos

Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.

IllumED Slides

Download lesson + answers ↓

IllumED · 1/10

Your learning goal

I can use the present and perfect tenses to talk about small changes that have a big impact on our lives.

1 of 10

Pequeños grandes cambios: perfect and present tenses: 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 present and perfect tenses to talk about small changes that have a big impact on our lives.

Key learning points

The perfect tense is used to express what has happened.
To conjugate the perfect tense, use 'he', 'has', 'ha', 'hemos', 'habéis' or 'han' (from 'haber') + past participle.
To form the past participle of regular verbs, remove the -ar/-er/-ar and add -ado (-ar verbs) or -ido (-er/-ir verbs).
Remember to use the correct ending to refer to the right person in the present tense.

Words to know

perfect tense: tense used to express what has happened, e.g. 'I have listened', 'I have bought'
haber: special verb that helps form the perfect tense in Spanish, translated as 'have, has' in English, e.g. 'I have lived', 'he has spoken'
auxiliary: verb that helps form part of a 2-verb tense structure
past participle: form of a verb used to form the perfect tense, e.g. 'listened', 'bought'

Common mistakes

All past participles in Spanish end in -ado (-ar verbs) or -ido (-er/-ir verbs).

Although most Spanish past participles do follow these regular patterns, some verbs have irregular past participles which just need to be learnt, e.g. 'escrito' ('written'), 'visto' ('seen'), 'hecho' ('done'), 'dicho' ('said').

For parents, carers and teachers

Teachers can end this lesson with a gratitude and micro-habit reflection exercise using sentence stems that clearly distinguish the tenses, e.g. 'Hoy estoy agradecido/a por/porque' and 'Cada día' + verb in the present tense.