In a perfect world, purchasing any Spanish course in itself would not pose an issue as every Spanish course would teach the exact same material and each course would therefore help the student to achieve their goal of speaking Spanish.

The truth is that each student is different…some are much better at learning languages than others, some are better at learning a language from a grammatical viewpoint as you would learn it at school for example, whereas others have much better results by concentrating on conversational skills.

It is for this reason that many Spanish courses are now available, each one slightly differing in teaching techniques and methods offering the best possible fit for individual students.

The one area of Spanish study that has seen a massive surge in popularity in the last ten years is the use of software for studying instead of the more traditional text books and cassettes.

Because more and more people have become connected online the flexibility that it provided for studying a language became much more apparent and as a result there has been a consistent increase in available courses.

Many of the earlier online courses offered little in the way of improving upon traditional methods other than offering the same material in a new format, but after a while specific techniques were improved upon that improved the speed at which Spanish could be learnt whilst also making learning much more enjoyable as well as improving the practical application.

Whilst some of these software courses are quite expensive, there are a few others available that are as good, if not better, which are much more reasonably priced.

Personally, I always like to use prolonged popularity rather than short term popularity as a benchmark before considering making a purchase and it for this reason that I would recommend checking out the reviews of the following popular courses before making any decision on which is the best course for you:

1.Rocket Spanish Language Course
2.Visual Link

There is one other software program that is worthy of mentioning as it has helped me, and many others, learn Spanish quickly and effectively and is a ‘must have’ if you are serious about speaking Spanish well and that program is called Verbarrator Spanish verb conjugation trainer, just click on the link to read the review.

By the way, if you are located in California, why not check out this list of Spanish classes in Los Angeles

I know I would and I’ll tell you why.

I’m pretty sure you would agree with me when I say that learning Spanish verb conjugation is both difficult and extremely boring but, never-the-less it is something that every student of Spanish has to overcome, especially if they want to speak Spanish fluently.

Read more about Spanish Online Verb Conjugator…

The Spanish Verb Venir

The Spanish Verb Venir, Past Tense Conjugation

Venir past tense conjugation, specifically the preterite tense, is extremely irregular and as such is a difficult Spanish verb to learn. This post provides the conjugation for both past tenses of the Spanish verb venir, the imperfect and the preterite and a suggestion as to how they could be learnt quickly.

There are many irregular verbs in Spanish, many of which are very important in everyday conversation and communication. One such irregular verb is Venir, meaning to come.

Venir is highly irregular, and nowhere is this more noticeable than when it is used in the preterite tense, which is one of the two past tenses used most often in Spanish, the imperfect tense being the other.

Venir follows the regular conjugation of an -ir verb when in the imperfect past tense as the table below shows, regular endings shown in bold;

Venir – Imperfect Tense

• yo venía I was coming
• tú venías you were coming
• él, ella      venía he, she or it was coming
• usted venía you were coming (polite singular)
• nosotros veníamos we were coming
• vosotros veníais you were (all) coming
• ellos, ellas venían they were coming
• ustedes venían you were (all) coming (polite plural)

However, the conjugation of the preterito, or preterit, is highly irregular and, as such, will require more study time to master fully:

Venir – Preterite Tense

• yo vine I came
• tú viniste you came
• él, ella vino he, she or it came
• usted vino you came (polite singular)
• nosotros vinimos we came
• vosotros vinisteis you (all) came
• ellos, ellas vinieron they came
• ustedes vinieron you (all) came (polite plural)

Venir, as previously mentioned, is a highly irregular verb in all but one of the simple tenses (that would be the imperfect tense as covered above) and as such, it would be a good idea to use a verb conjugation training program to help study it.

Verb conjugation training software programs are highly beneficial when studying verbs like venir and similar difficult verbs by providing targeted exercises on user designated problem areas and, by doing so, it will ensure you master the conjugations of irregular Spanish verbs like venir in the shortest time possible.

It should also be noted that there are also a few other verbs that follow this pattern of venir past tense conjugation and they are commonly referred to as the venir family of verbs and they are as follows:

• Intervenir to intervene or, to take part
• Prevenir to prevent or, to warn
• Sobrevenir to happen suddenly or, to follow
• Avenir to reconcile or, to come to an agreement
• Contravenir to violate, to contravene or, to infringe
• Devenir to become, to happen
• Convenir to agree on or, to be suitable
• Provenir to come from

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Spanish verb conjugation is notoriously hard to master, and is one of the main reasons why people give up ever trying to learn Spanish to a competent level. Don’t be one of them! Mastering Spanish verbs is a lot easier with a Spanish verb conjugator. For more information check out this Verbarrator Review

Spanish verbs are difficult to learn, or rather learning the conjugation of Spanish verbs is. Difficult or not, the learning of Spanish verbs is unavoidable as they are an integral part of the Spanish language as are verbs to any language. But which verb should we deem the most important in the Spanish language?

Spanish verbs are probably the most difficult and the most complex areas of the Spanish Language. Spanish verbs are split into 3 main groups, those verbs that end in -ar, -er and -ir, each of the verbs in these verb groups has multiple endings to indicate who or what is performing an action. There are also numerous irregular verbs that follow their own specific verb pattern that must also be learnt and many of these are used frequently in everyday conversation such as; to be and; to have.

The complexities do not stop there because there are 16 different tenses that are each conjugated differently, these 16 tenses are split into 8 simple tenses and 8 perfect (compound) tenses and it is these perfect tenses that should give you a clue as to the verb many, including myself, deem to be the most important verb in Spanish. There are four distinct types of Spanish verb and they are; regular, irregular, reflexive and auxiliary and there is one specific auxiliary verb that is used with the past participle of every single verb in Spanish in each of the 8 perfect tenses. That verb of which I am writing about is haber meaning to have.

Understanding, and knowing, the various conjugations of haber will make it possible to use verbs more extensively. The perfect tenses are those tenses that describe a completed task, for example: I have been; I had been; I was; I will have been and, I would have been, are all perfect tenses that will use haber as an auxiliary verb.

In both English and Spanish, the perfect tenses are formed by using haber, followed by the past participle (el participio in Spanish). In English, the participle typically is formed by adding -ed to the end of verbs; the Spanish participle, which has origins related to the English participle, typically is formed by adding -ado for -ar verbs and -ido for -er and -ir verbs.

The verb tense in the perfect tenses is decided by which simple tense of haber is being used: for example if we said: I have eaten and I will have eaten the only way to distinguish between the two would be the tense of the auxiliary verb being used; I have eaten = he comido and I will have eaten = habré comido.

It isn’t feasible to show the complete conjugation of haber for each tense in Spanish as there are so many but the example below highlights how haber is used, using the past participle of the verb andar, meaning to walk, in the first person singular for each of the perfect tenses:

Indicative Tenses

Present Perfect – he andado – I have walked

Pluperfect – había andado – I had walked

Past Perfect – hube andado – I walked

Future Perfect – habré andado – I will have walked

Conditional Perfect – habría andado – I would have walked

Subjunctive

Present Perfect – haya andado – I have walked

Pluperfect – hubiera or hubiese andado – I had walked

Future Perfect – hubiera andado – I will have walked

So there you have it, haber, is the most used verb in Spanish and as such rightfully earns the honor of being the most important Spanish verb. Obviously, the use of a full conjugation sheet for the verb haber would make the use of this auxiliary verb a great deal easier to understand and you can download or print off such a sheet here.

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The best way to improve your use of Spanish verbs and to master Spanish verb conjugation is to use a good Spanish verb conjugator, if you would like information about Spanish verb conjugator software and in particular about the newest and most interactive Spanish verb conjugation software program, read my honest review of the Verbarrator Spanish verb conjugation software. Don’t continue to struggle learning verbs, a Spanish verb conjugation trainer will help you to master Spanish verbs quickly and effectively!

The United Kingdom has recently seen an increase in the number of students moving away from the more traditional languages of French and German and instead they are opting to learn Spanish. The reason for this shift is the popularity of the ‘Colombian Songbird’ Shakira, as she is often regarded to on the internet. Well, that is what we are expected to believe if we were to take everything that is written in the newspapers as gospel!

Personally, I find it difficult to believe that a pop star can have so much influence over an entire country’s student body, especially when it is regarding the choice of which language to learn. If that were to be the case we would have seen an increase in Spanish students a long time ago in tune with the massive popularity that other Spanish speaking singers and celebrities enjoyed at one time or another; Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, Julio Iglesias (yes, remember him) Ricky Martin and more recently the extremely popular Enrique Iglesias, son of the aforementioned Spanish swooner, and I’m sure there are many, many more.

The fact is, although Shakira is extremely good at what she does and is very popular with men and women and not always for the same reasons, I think labeling her as the catalyst for the recent changes to language education in the UK is a little extreme. However, that isn’t to say that popular culture cannot change and shape a society, and influence choice…remember the Beatles?

However, learning the Spanish language has been on the increase for many years now, irrespective of popular culture, and for a lot of people it is unquestionably the first language of choice to learn, but why?

In the US it is easy to assume why this would be the case as not only does the US share a border with Mexico, which just happens to have the largest population of Spanish speakers in the world, but according to the 2000 census, Spanish is already spoken by 12% of the US population, which means the US has the fifth largest population of Spanish speakers in the world. This is in complete contrast to the UK which is quite insular where learning languages are concerned and this is highlighted in recent figures that reveal drastic reductions in the number of students taking languages at secondary, higher education, and university levels.

However, although the overall picture is bleak for language study within the education system in the UK there is indeed room for some optimism when considering the increased number of students opting for Spanish. Rather than popular culture, there are a number of more likely reasons why this switch to Spanish is probably happening and they are:

• A greater number of teachers available that can now teach Spanish
• Greater freedom of choice for the student doubled with government policy change in 2004 that made languages non compulsory to 14 year olds and over.
• Stronger bonds with Spain due mainly to the fact that a large percentage of British people holiday each year in Spain, which is also home to over 1 million expats
• Spanish culture is seen as being much more appealing and far more accessible than other European cultures.

Adult language education, on the other hand, is one area that is increasing year on year, and it is Spanish once again that is increasing in popularity, especially in the 40 – 60 age group that one can only surmise are preparing for retirement in sunnier climates.

Online Spanish courses are the preferred way of learning Spanish for the vast majority of these mature students as they are a more cost effective and flexible means of learning Spanish, not to mention quicker, when compared to the traditional evening class.

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Interested in learning Spanish? Find out more about THE most popular and successful Online Spanish Language Course Or maybe you are already studying Spanish and need help with Spanish verbs, check out my review of this new and revolutionary Spanish Verb Conjugator that WILL drastically increase the speed at which you learn Spanish.