Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. By introducing a little bit or a whole lot! For starters, your students will not get bored. No student would choose a long list of endings over a fun charades game. Adding fun to the topic is just what you need. Additionally, you will get less stressed and desperate. Do you know that feeling of helplessness and desperation when you are trying to explain something to your students and their brains just block the information?
You have to repeat the exact same thing with slightly different words over a dozen times, only to get a couple of them who understand what you mean. Verb conjugation games delete this feeling from the class equation. Finally, the way games introduce different topics in your classroom can be personalized ad infinitum. We will be focusing on verb conjugation games today, but just change a couple of things in the games below and you will be able to use them with any other topic you can think of.
With games, the possibilities are virtually endless! A traditional way of teaching verb conjugations is by giving your students the endings of the tense you want to focus on and asking them to conjugate different verbs in all the persons. Granted, this is something that will need to be done at some point anyway, but if you present every single tense in the exact same way and ask them to repeatedly do the exact same thing with 20 different verbs, they will get bored sooner than later.
A lot of people tend to think if you teach something the traditional way, there has to be some kind of boring component to it. While this is not always the case, it is true that when you teach your students verb conjugations in the traditional way, they will probably get bored after 15 minutes or less. However, if you add a little bit of fun every couple of classes and start using some of the games in this post, they will have that entertainment factor that will make them want to engage more.
As a result, they will not only have more fun, but also learn more in less time. Students will not have the feeling that they are memorizing endings and doing repetitive, dull conjugation exercises for hours.
Instead, they will be learning in a more practical way that makes them think more and also conjugate verbs while having a lot of fun. That is exactly the advantage of using games in your classroom. At the end of the day, your learners will have done the same they would have done if you had just given them the endings and the list of verbs they have to conjugate. But since the processes of learning, thinking and conjugating are so different when playing games, they will leave the class with the feeling that they have really learned something interesting in a fun and exciting way.
This will make them look forward to wanting more, and we teachers know that is the perfect approach to learning a language. Because of this, I have made a list of 10 games you can use during your verb conjugation classes.
Feel free to use them and modify them as you see fit. Most of these games can be played with practically any group at almost any language level, but I will be adding some modifications here and there so that you have more options for intermediate and advanced students. But first, if you really want to maximize your grammar lessons, bring FluentU into the classroom.
FluentU offers a wealth of awesome teaching tools to enhance your Spanish grammar lessons. FluentU takes authentic videos videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons. You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app. In this way, FluentU stands as an excellent choice for standalone curriculum or supplemental exercises.
With its diverse catalog, it makes teaching and learning Spanish fun and engaging. Try our free trial today to see if FluentU is right for you and your students. Start by holding the ball in front of your students and picking one of them. Throw the ball so that the student catches it. When this happens, tell him or her to conjugate a verb in a specific person in a specific tense.
For example:. If the student gets it right, they can choose the next contestant, throw them the ball and ask them to conjugate a verb in a specific person and tense. When a student does not answer correctly, the ball goes back to you and the student gets eliminated. There are different ways in which you can personalize and modify this game depending on the group you are teaching:.
It depends upon the subject. If the subject is I, you use —o; if it is we, you use —amos, etc. Remember, always look for the subject first! There are 14 Spanish verb tenses. This includes 7 simple tenses 1 verb , and 7 compound tenses a verb preceded by a helping verb. Note : It is important that each student master the Present Indicative tense as well as possible. The concepts and principles related to verbs that are learned in studying the Present tense will make the other tenses much easy.
This is simply a means of visualizing the concept of verb conjugation and is used as a tool for learning this concept. Eventually all students who wish to become fluent in a language must actually learn what the individual words conjugated verbs mean. This comes from lots of practice. In the meantime, the verb chart is an effective tool to help the student through the early stages.
Spanish speaking people have a unique way of speaking to other people that requires using one of two verb forms. These are called the formal and the familiar sometimes called the informal. These are used when one person is speaking to another person or persons, not when speaking about them. In Spain and the Canary Islands they also use two forms depending whether they are speaking to one person or more than one person see note below.
However, Spanish speakers in Latin America and the United States use only one form in speaking to more than one person, regardless of who they are.
This is sometimes called the 2nd person singular. Spain uses the vosotros form, sometimes called the 2nd person plural. When speaking to close family members, friends, members of your own peer group, small children, and sometimes pets.
This rule varies from one Spanish speaking country to another and from one family to another. Spanish speaking people use the formal in all cases where they would not use the familiar. It is used when you are not acquainted with the other person, when the person has authority over you, when it is proper to show respect to the other person such as children talking to adults , or whenever you are in doubt what form you should use.
Latin Americans and Spanish speaking people in the United States usually use the familiar only when talking to one person. When they are speaking to more than one person they will use the same form regardless to whom they are speaking. Here are some examples using the English phrase "do you have my book? Keep it simple! Ask your Spanish teacher! Sorry, but nothing beats old-fashioned hard work! Best case scenario, our students will follow our instructions without any kind of motivation or excitement , learn how to to conjugate, and go home feeling relieved.
I tried this last term, after many years of preparing my students for verb conjugations as if I were about to send them into a battlefield. That is, non-existent.
If this is true for your students, then the only thing I can suggest is to invest some of your precious time in reinforcing basic grammar in their native language. Do they know what a verb is?
Can they understand what a tense means? I remember when learning French, my first teacher insisted on us learning the endings off by heart every week. While this was useful for those of us that did manage to memorize small patterns, some found it completely discouraging.
This year, I faced a complete redecoration of my classroom and decided to put the whole set of endings and conjugations for different tenses up on the walls. Instead of teaching one tense at a time, linking them with different topics, I decided to spend a lesson showing my students how to use the display to conjugate tenses. By the end of that fifty-minute lesson, my eleven-year-olds were able to change verbs in the present, past and future tenses.
I left that room thinking either I was on to a winning technique or those eleven-year-old boys were the smartest kids I had ever met. Once I provided my students with the resources, taught them how to use them and ensured they knew the basics, I let them be independent. This links in with the final step: try, try, try and try again. Why not get your students to do their own versions? Creating a rap or song in which they explain conjugations is a fantastic way for them to do some revision and check their understanding.
Speaking of videos and games, you should also check out FluentU as another engaging resource that students would appreciate. FluentU takes authentic videos videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.
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