This Spanish Medium Review quiz will start you on the road towards learning how to conjugate verbs in the past tense. Up until now you have only learned how to speak (and write) in Spanish in the present tense. The present tense means you can only talk about what is happening right now. However, everything does not happen right now.
Some things happen in the past (like this morning, yesterday, last week, last month, last year, etc.) and some things will happen in the future (like tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, etc.). To talk about past activities, you need to use the past tense of the verbs and to talk about future activities, you need to use the future tense of the verbs. The Spanish words for 'past, present' and 'future' are: pretérito, presente and futuro. Here in the Spanish Medium Review series you are going to learn how to conjugate verbs in the pretérito tense.
As you may recall, when conjugating in the present tense you use the following verb endings: o, as, a, amos, áis, an for AR verbs, o, es, e, emos, éis, en for ER verbs and o, es, e, imos, ís, en for IR verbs. These endings were added to the base verb after dropping the AR, ER and IR endings. The same rule holds true when we work with the pretérito tense of the verbs. Let’s take a look at those endings.
PRESENTE TENSE ENDINGS |
PRETÉRITO TENSE ENDINGS |
AR: o, as, a, amos, áis, an |
é, aste, ó, amos, asteis, aron |
ER: o, es, e, emos, éis, en |
í, iste, ió, imos, isteis, ieron |
IR: o, es, e, imos, ís, en |
í, iste, ió, imos, isteis, ieron |
Did you notice that in the past [pretérito] tense both the ER and IR verbs get conjugated with the same endings? Now let’s look at three verbs in the past tense with their corresponding pronouns.
HABLAR (to speak)
SPANISH |
ENGLISH |
yo hablé |
I spoke |
tú hablaste |
you spoke (familiar) |
usted habló |
you spoke (formal) |
él habló |
he spoke |
ella habló |
she spoke |
nosotros / nosotras hablamos |
we spoke (same ending as present tense) |
vosotros / vosotras hablasteís |
you spoke (plural/familiar) |
ustedes hablaron |
you spoke (plural/formal) |
ellos/ellas hablaron |
they spoke |
COMER (to eat)
SPANISH |
ENGLISH |
yo comí |
I ate |
tú comiste |
you ate (familiar) |
usted comió |
you ate (formal) |
él comió |
he ate |
ella comió |
she ate |
nosotros / nosotras comimos |
we ate (same ending as present tense for an IR verb) |
vosotros / vosotras comisteis |
you ate (plural/familiar) |
ustedes comieron |
you ate (plural/formal) |
ellos/ellas comieron |
they ate |
ESCRIBIR (to write)
SPANISH |
ENGLISH |
yo escribí |
I wrote |
tú escribiste |
you wrote (familiar) |
usted escribió |
you wrote (formal) |
él escribió |
he wrote |
ella escribió |
she wrote |
nosotros / nosotras escribimos |
we wrote (same present tense ending used) |
vosotros / vosotras escribisteis |
you wrote (plural/familiar) |
ustedes escribieron |
you wrote (plural/formal) |
ellos/ellas escribieron |
they wrote |
Now it is your turn to conjugate in the past tense. The quiz contains ten sentences with a verb that has been shown in all capitalized letters. All the verbs used in this quiz will be regular verbs. From the answers provided, locate the correctly conjugated Spanish verb. Make certain you choice the correct tense and correct spelling!