What they say: “Have you ever found it impossible to express yourself in Spanish simply because you didn’t know how to conjugate a Spanish verb? You knew the vocabulary words that you needed to express yourself in Spanish. But you just couldn’t remember how to conjugate the verb that you were using in Spanish. And without correctly conjugating the Spanish verb that you wanted to use — the person who you were talking to had no idea what you were trying to say. And can you blame that person for not understanding you?”
This is James from James Spanish (the learning Spanish blog). This is an excellent piece of software for learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs. Besides teaching you how to conjugate 567 different Spanish verbs in 20 different verb tenses, it has lots of features. I happened to find every single feature useful. My favorite feature of this software is that it allows me to customize my own drills.
By allowing me to select only the verb tenses that I am having the most trouble with I was able to target my weak points in conjugating Spanish verbs. Another feature that I found very helpful is that it allowed me to customize my response time and as I got better at conjugating Spanish verbs and needed less time to respond with my answer, the software allowed me to customize or shorten the response time. This feature would also come in handy for a beginner who needs more time to respond. There’s also a “sequential” mode or “random” mode feature that makes it so that no two drills are the same.
I do think the Verbarrator software does an excellent job at replacing the popular verb conjugation books. Mainly because the verb conjugation books are not the most fun way to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs, perhaps because verb conjugation books such as 501 Spanish verbs are more of a reference book than a learning tool. And reading a reference book can be boring. On the other hand, I found that the Verbarrator is both an entertaining and effective way to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs. That explains why the Verbarrator is among my top three tools for learning how to speak Spanish. The other two that I recommend are listed below:
1. Lights, Camera, Spanish (Book + DVD): Learn Conversational Spanish by Watching a Romantic Adventure This is actually a 90 minute movie for Spanish-language learners. It gives the option to watch the movie with subtitles but I’d recommend not using them to improve your Spanish. This “movie” also includes a workbook so that Spanish-language can reinforce the dialog from the film. The workbook also has lots of exercises to keep you engaged in the film and to reinforce the Spanish that you learn. But be prepared to hear Peruvian accents which is very different from most Latin American accents.
2. Diccionario esencial de la lengua espanola de la Real Academia Espanola (Spanish Edition) If you are really serious about speaking the language fluently, then at some point you will need to replace your Spanish-English dictionary and get a pure Spanish dictionary with both the vocabulary words and the definitions are entirely in Spanish. I use this one only because it was recommended by a friend from Spain who teaches Spanish.
So… I’ve been learning spanish for awhile. I’d consider myself to be intermediate. I can hold a conversation and struggle when it comes to using past tense, talking about things I did awhile ago or just a moment ago… etc. I know a variety of verbs and get stuck.
That being said– this program was exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’ve been using audio CDs (Pimsleur and Learning Spanish Like Crazy) along with a variety of books to help with grammar.. but this program reeeeallly helped me to grasp the idea of using tenses and memorizing them quickly.
The program is set up for you to choose either multiple tenses, or one set of tenses and work on a set of verbs accordingly. (It’s like having flash cards along with someone to pronounce everything correctly for you). You can also go through and review all of the words.
I highly recommend this program. I wish I’d had it when I was in school– but I am really glad someone made a proram like this one for me to use now*
I would like to thnkx for your efforts you’ve place in creating this web site. I’m hoping the same high-grade weblog publish from you in the upcoming as well. In fact your creative producing abilities has inspired me to acquire my own weblog now. Genuinely the running a blog is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is actually a very good example of it.
This language looks fun to study…
I want to learn this cool language!
Thanks for sharing this helpful info!