The Use of Short-Stories to Enhance the Acquistion of Spanish Preterit and Imperfect

Abstract

The different uses between Preterit and Imperfect past tenses are one of the hardest grammatical features of Spanish to learn. While part of the reason for this to happen is due to the fact that several languages, like English for example, do not signal the aspectual differences in the same way Spanish does, some of the blame lies with the confusing, unreliable and even inaccurate explanations that the vast majority of textbooks present. In order to address this issue, this thesis project offers Spanish instructors a useful tool as it is the use of literary text in form of short-stories. This tool consists in three lesson plans based on three different short-stories. Within the lesson plans there are comprehension, interpretation, culture, vocabulary and grammar exercises that we believe will help students to enhance the acquisition of these two past tenses.