Hello there buddies! We are here with a new Spanish lesson today! Today we’re learning about something super exciting: our everyday actions in Spanish. In the past lesson we learned to talk about likes and dislikes in Spanish. Whenever learning Spanish in Quito, Cuzco, or Sucre we will need to know how to talk about the things we usually do.

Objective: talk about everyday actions
Grammar content: present verb tense, pronouns
Vocabulary: Daily routine actions

Uses of the Spanish present tense

1. We use the Spanish present tense to talk about true facts.

+ Marte es un planeta
– Mars is a planet

2. We also use the present tense to talk about habits or things we do regularly. Just like in English we use the Present Simple to talk about things done repeatedly through time, the same happens with Spanish

+ Me levanto a las 6 en punto
– I get up at 6 o’clock

3. We may also use Spanish present tense to express an immediate future action:

+ Mañana nos vamos a la playa
– Tomorrow we are going to the beach

4. Sometimes, the Spanish present tense can be also be used to talk about past events. In this case, we use the present tense to relive the event, to make it closer to us.

+ Llegamos al aeropuerto y nos dicen que hay un retraso en el avión

– We got to the airport and we were told our flight was delayed

How to form the present tense in Spanish?

In Spanish we have three different verb classes, easily recognizable by the words ending: those ending by -ar, -er or -ir. Every verb class is formed with its stem + conjugation. To know from where to start conjugating, we have to know which is the verb ending in its infinitive form and identify the stem. For example, one typical Spanish -ar verb is hablar (to speak). If we take the verb ending – ar out, we have the stem left: “habl” from there, we may begin conjugating.

Keep in mind that this applies to regular verbs, in Spanish there also irregular verbs that may not fall into these regular patterns.

Spanish present tense -ar verbs

Verb amar (to love)

Remember that in Spanish from Latin America from the 2nd person singular and plural we use “Usted/Ustedes” and in the Spanish from Spain we use “Tú and Vosotros/as”, though Usted/Ustedes can be also used in Spanish from Spain in formal situations.

Spanish present tense –er verbs

Verb comer (“to eat”)

Spanish Present Tense -ir verbs

Verb vivir (“to live”)

It is usual to find adverbs of time going altogether with the Present Tense such as siempre (always), a menudo (often), normalmente (usually), a veces (sometimes), casi nunca (hardly ever), nunca (never), todos los días (every day), una vez a la semana (once a week), etc.

Bear in mind that sometimes the verbs we use to express everyday actions in Spanish are reflexible. Reflexible verbs are the ones whose direct object is the same as its subject, for example: “You wash yourself”.

Reflexible verbs (verbos pronominales) end with + se in Spanish (levantarse [to get up], ducharse [to shower], vestirse [to dress]) and are formed as follows:

Pronoun (Yo, Tú/Usted, Él/Ella, Nosotros, Vosotros/Ustedes/Ellos) + reflexive pronoun (me, te, se, nos, os, se) + the verb.

Vocabulary

Let’s take a look at this video to learn more about the use of Reflexive Verbs and Pronouns!

And finally, time to practice all that we have learned! Let’s do these interactive exercises:

Hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a lot with us in this lesson! See you in the next!❤️