Can someone please check-over these Spanish questions? I know I’ve asked these before, but I got a lot of them wrong and now I really want to make sure I’ve got them correct.

Question

Subject: Preterit and Imperfect Tenses Used Together

Instructions: For each sentence, choose the most correct use of verb in parentheses. Write out your choices on the lines below each sentence. (My answers are in bold.)

1-2. Cuando Mamá (llegó, llegaba) a casa, los niños (durmieron, dormían).

llegó dormían

1. __________________ 2. _________________

 

3-4. Cuando yo (tuve, tenía) veinte años, (compré, compraba) un carro.

tenía compré

3. __________________ 4. _________________

5-6. María y yo (leímos, leíamos) cuando (entró, entraba) José.

leíamos entró

5. __________________ 6. _________________

7-8. Carlos y Adela (estudiaron, estudiaban) cuando (sonó, sonaba) el teléfono.

estudiaban sonó

7. __________________ 8. _________________

 

9-10. Tú (cocinaste, cocinabas) cuando tu hermana (cerró, cerraba) la puerta. 

cocinabas cerró

9. __________________ 10. _________________

Answer 1

These are all correct! You have great control of the imperfect and preterit tenses. If you want an explanation of anything or if you're still unsure about particular questions feel free to reach out!

Answer 2

The difference between the preterit and imperfect tenses can be very difficult for English speakers to differentiate as our past tense construction of verbs is much more simple. As someone who also struggled with knowing which form to use, let me give you the explanation that significantly helped me when learning Spanish. In these cases that you’ve asked about, it’s helpful to remember that imperfect is used to describe what is happening in the background and preterit to describe a momentary event. For example, in English the sentence, “I was cooking dinner when my brother entered the kitchen,” would have two different tenses of verbs. “Was cooking” would be what was happening in the background of this situation, what was happening before the main action happened. Then, “entered” would be the momentary event, the main action that this sentence is about. Therefore, “was cooking” would translate to “cocinaba” (imperfect) and “entered” would translate to “entró” (preterit).

Now, let’s look at these various examples that you posted.

1. llegó (because the mother arriving at home is the main action of the sentence and a momentary event)
2. dormían (something also helpful to think about is the nature of the verb itself. In this case, sleeping is really never a momentary event. Unless you want to say you or someone “fell asleep,” which is the verb “dormirse” instead of “dormir.” However, you can’t have that in your mind when thinking of which tense to use with verbs similar in nature to “dormir.”
3. tenía (this is a similar situation to “to sleep.” When talking about how old you were in the past, you will always use “tenía” instead of “tuve” because of the inherent nature of what you’re saying. Being a certain age is NOT a momentary event and therefore imperfect.)
4. compré (This is preterit because it was a momentary event. There was one moment in which you bought the car.)
5. leíamos (Notice the similarities in the next three sets of questions. There is one action happening in the background when all of a sudden, something else happens. You’ll have the same pattern for each one. The background action will be in the imperfect tense, and the momentary action will be in the imperfect tense.)
6. entró (momentary action)
7. estudiaban (background action)
8. sonó (momentary action. While obviously a phone doesn’t ring just within one moment, this is the main action that the sentence is about.)
9. concinabas (background action)
10. cerró (momentary action)

I hope this is helpful because I know determining when to use each of these tenses is challenging. I encourage you to also keep finding examples though and applying this logic of a background action versus and momentary action in order to better understand when to use each of the tenses. Also, hang in there because I promise that one day it will just click. You got this!