Category: Spanish Basics

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Can Negative Mental Associations Affect you when Learning Spanish?

I hated mayonnaise while I was growing up. If someone made me a sandwich and it had mayonnaise in it, I just would not eat it.

If I ordered a sandwich at a restaurant and I forgot to request a mayonnaise-free version (which often slipped my mind,) I would just eat the French fries even if I was still hungry after finishing them.

Although it was not a huge problem, this is something that troubled me for years because I couldn’t understand what was the cause of it.

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Easy Ways to Talk about the Future in Spanish

It was almost lunchtime when Umair came to my desk and asked me this: “How do I say: “I am going to the bathroom?”

“Why do you want to know that?” I asked.

He replied: “Because I was on my way to the bathroom, I got curious, and started thinking: How would I say this in Spanish?”

He continued: “I already know a little about the present tense. But how do I talk about the future in Spanish?”

I explained that an easy way to say “I am going to the bathroom” in Spanish is: “Voy a ir al baño”, and then continued to share a few essential tools to talk about the future in Spanish during lunch.

Today, we will review a few of the tools I shared with him that day and additional ones that have been very useful for my students over the years.

In this article, we will review a few conversational shortcuts that will be useful for beginners who want to talk about the future in Spanish without memorizing many conjugations.

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Easy Ways to Talk about the Past in Spanish

“At one point, I thought I was not going to be able to learn Spanish. There just seemed to be so many words and so many things to learn. I didn’t know how to get started” said Sonia one day while we were having lunch.

Then I asked: “Remember when we reviewed the past tenses in Spanish?”

She replied: “Yes, the way you explained it helped me get unstuck. Before, I used to think the past tense was completely random and illogical and difficult to memorize. But after understanding the patterns I could use; it was much easier. It made sense.”

Then, we continued to have lunch and had a few laughs as she told me a few fun stories about her unusual coworkers. Good times! =)

What’s this about?

In this article, we will cover some of the main tools that helped Sonia (as well as other students) so she could talk about the past in Spanish quickly, without having to memorize dozens of difficult conjugations.

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