Build Spanish grammar one short lesson at a time

Build había plus a past participle and place one completed action before another past event.

Use imperfect estar plus a gerund for an action that was in progress around a past moment.

Combine completed events with descriptions, habits, and ongoing background to build a coherent story.

Order a story with primero, mientras, de repente, después, al final, and tense choices that show event relationships.

Attach the shared future endings to complete infinitives and use them for future events.

Use common shortened and changed stems while keeping the regular future endings.

Choose the simple future when presenting a prediction, promise, or decision as a future claim.

Use a future form to express a probability or guess about what is happening now.

Attach conditional endings to the infinitive and use the tense for hypothetical results and softened statements.

Reuse the same irregular stems as the future with the regular conditional endings.

Use gustaría, podría, debería, and querría to soften requests and express advice or wishes.

Use the conditional for an event that was future from an earlier past viewpoint and for probability about the past.

Start from the present yo form, remove -o, and add the opposite-vowel subjunctive endings.

Learn the fully irregular present subjunctive forms of ser, ir, haber, saber, estar, and dar.

Carry present stem changes into the subjunctive and apply the special nosotros patterns of -ir verbs.

Choose the indicative for presented information and the subjunctive when a clause is framed through influence, reaction, doubt, or non-specific reference.

Use the subjunctive after verbs of wanting, requesting, recommending, and influencing when subjects differ.

Use the subjunctive after expressions of happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, and annoyance about another clause.

Use es importante que, es posible que, conviene que, and similar judgments with the subjunctive.

Contrast affirmative belief with doubt, denial, and negated opinion to choose the mood.

Use the indicative for habitual or completed events and the subjunctive for a pending future event.

Choose indicative or subjunctive according to whether a time-clause event is completed, habitual, or still pending.

Use para que plus the subjunctive when one subject acts so that another subject can achieve a purpose.

Express wishes and degrees of uncertainty with independent subjunctive clauses.

Connect descriptions to people, things, and places with an appropriate relative expression.

Use the indicative for a specific known antecedent and the subjunctive for something unknown, non-specific, or denied.

Use lo que to mean what or the thing that when the antecedent is neutral or an entire idea.

Use se with a third-person verb when the actor is general, unknown, or intentionally omitted.

Use no plus a present subjunctive tú form to tell someone informally not to do something.

Attach pronouns to affirmative commands and place them before negative commands in the correct order.

Use present subjunctive nosotros forms to suggest actions that include the speaker.

Preserve spoken stress when pronouns are attached by adding a written accent where Spanish spelling requires it.

Use present indicative after si and a future, command, or present result for likely future conditions.

Build the common -ra series from the third-person plural preterite and use it in basic present hypotheses.

Combine si plus the imperfect subjunctive with a conditional result for hypothetical present or future situations.

Connect an argument with aunque, sin embargo, a pesar de, por eso, así que, and de todos modos.

Change quoted statements into reported clauses with decir que and appropriate person references.

Report yes-or-no and information questions without retaining direct-question word order or punctuation.

Report instructions with decir, pedir, or recomendar plus que and a subjunctive clause.

After a past reporting verb, shift present ideas toward the imperfect and future ideas toward the conditional when the viewpoint requires it.