Author: Mariana

Amigos, hoy tenemos un gran reto por delante (We have a great challenge ahead of us). I’m Mariana, from Spring Spanish, and in the next 15 minutes I’ll show you 100 common mistakes in Spanish students make all the time… and how to avoid them! Por cierto (By the way), you can download a PDF…

Dear students, this is it: the last video you’ll ever have to watch about how and when to use el gerundio Spanish!  1. What is el Gerundio Spanish?  El gerundio —or gerund in English— is a verb used to indicate two things:  The gerund isn’t difficult at all! I will show you how easy it…

Mis queridos alumnos (My dear students), today you’re going to learn the preterite, or pretérito Spanish, the most used past tense in Mexico and most other Latin-American countries.  It is also known as pretérito indefinido and pretérito perfecto simple, but this is jargon. Let’s stick to pretérito alone, since that’s how most people call it…

Did you know there are some Spanish words that you might be hearing or using sometimes, but are actually offensive to Mexicans? In this lesson, you’re going to discover 8 Spanish words you should NEVER use when talking to a Mexican! I’m teacher Mariana, from Spring Spanish, a proud Mexican, and here’s the first offensive…

Hello, my dear students! I’m Mariana, head of grammar at Spring Spanish, and today I’m going to show you how you can always use the past tense in Spanish correctly while speaking in conversations… without having to think about conjugation tables!  We’re going to use our very own Conversation Based Chunking method to help you…

So, you’re in a conversation in Spanish, you’ve been listening to your conversation partner, and now you’re getting ready to say something… BUT suddenly you’ve forgotten the correct conjugation… You start rattling off the verb conjugation table in your head (yo, tú, él, nosotros…).  People are waiting for you to finish your sentence and that…

So, you’re in a conversation in Spanish, and your conversation partner asks: And you want to reply that you’re going to have lunch with a friend, so you start… But you’ve forgotten how to form the future in Spanish! The horror! Do you need the future simple or how do you say “I’m going to…

Admítelo (Admit it): we’ve all tried to memorize Spanish verb tenses, only to end up in an actual conversation thinking “should I use pretérito now or pretérito perfecto… or what’s the difference again?” Even like: how many tenses Spanish has really? And then, you haven’t even started conjugating the verb!  Result: brain meltdown, and you’re…

Most Spanish learners don’t know when to use por and when to use para. Are you among them? Do you know the difference between por vs para? After learning the trick I’ll give you in this article, you won’t be surprised anymore! Depending on context, these two little words may be translated as either for,…