Indefinido or imperfecto? Ask the camera before you write the verb.

Ask a room of IB Spanish students which tense to use for the past and many of them answer: “the one that sounds right.” That works until the exam, where a story told entirely in one tense reads flat, and sometimes wrong. The fix is not a longer grammar table. It is one question you can ask in two seconds.

The camera question

Before you write a past verb, ask: is this a photo or a film?

• Photo (pretérito indefinido): something that happened, finished, and moves the story forward. “Ayer compré un libro.” “Me levanté, desayuné y salí.”
• Film (pretérito imperfecto): the scene, the background, the habit, what was going on. “Era de noche y llovía.” “Cuando era pequeño, jugaba al fútbol todos los días.”

Why mixing them is the real skill

Good narration uses both in the same sentence: the film sets the scene and the photo interrupts it.

• “Llovía mucho cuando salí de casa.” (The rain is the background; leaving is the event.)
• “Estaba cansada, así que me acosté temprano.”

The imperfecto paints the room. The indefinido is the person who walks in.

Signal words that help

Use them as clues, not as laws. Ayer, el año pasado, de repente, una vez usually point to a photo. Siempre, normalmente, todos los días, mientras, cuando era pequeño usually point to a film. When a clue and your common sense disagree, trust the question about the photo and the film.

A five-minute drill

1. Write six sentences about your last holiday or last weekend.
2. Underline every verb: one colour for photos, another for films.
3. If you only have one colour, rewrite two sentences to add background: the weather, how you felt, what other people were doing.
4. Read it aloud. Does it sound like a story or a list?

If you are the parent of a Spanish learner

You do not need any Spanish for this. Ask your child to tell you about yesterday in Spanish and to write it down. Then ask them to show you the verbs in two colours, photo and film. If the page is a single colour, you have found exactly what to work on, and you found it without reading a word.

Fixing this is usually a matter of a few targeted sessions, not months. If you would like to see how your child’s past tenses stand today, book an assessment lesson below.