I am having difficulty conjugating irregular verbs in future tense. How should I approach this?

Conjugating irregular verbs in Spanish may appear difficult at first but don't let this discourage you! With some revision of conjugation tables and short 5 minute quizzes at the start of every session we can ensure that you are feeling confident with irregulars in no time. Firstly, lets go over some irregular verbs in the present tense to see that you understand these conjugations (I would probably ask them to conjugate common irregulars that come up in exams such as 'saber', 'tener' and 'ir'. If the student appears to have difficulties with conjugating these, the starting point would be learning how to tackle irregular conjugations in the present tense first).
There are two ways that students tend to learn the conjugations of irregular verbs in the future tense: memorisation or learning patterns. Although memorisation can act as a safety net, it is super helpful to look for patterns that may help you as well - especially because you might be tested on a verb that you have not encountered before in your exam. Knowing how to conjugate regular verbs in the future tense makes it very easy to conjugate irregular ones. (At this point I would go over how to formulate regular verbs in the future tense, if the student understands then I would proceed, if not I would focus on teaching them these first). I would use the verbs venir, tener, salir, valer, poner, decir, suponer, hacer, imponer, componer and disponer as examples. These verbs can be grouped into a couple different conjugation methods. Some remove the 'er' or 'ir' and replace it with 'dr' and then conjugate them like normal future tense verbs. For others, the stem changes completely (e.g. the stem for decir become dir). With a whiteboard, I would show the student how the 'e' and 'c' of certain verbs such as hacer and decir are dropped to form the stem. I would also likely use the whiteboard to draw out the charts so the student can visually see the similarities between the conjugations of verbs in the same 'group'. The student would need to practice these conjugations and learn to remember how the stem changes for each irregular verb both during the lesson and by themselves. This will be practiced through repetition over the sessions and tested through short quizzes at the start of each session.



Answered by Sofia K. Spanish tutor

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