Teaching Grammar Communicatively and in the Target Language!
Grammar Lesson: The imperfect verb tense
Book: ¡En español! 2dos by McDougal Littell
Location: Unit 2, Etapa 1 – De pequeño, pg. 116
What students already know:
 Present tense,
 past tense using the preterite
 talking about people, places, likes, dislikes
 talking about school life, leisure time, travel, food, fine art
Modified Lesson
1. Present the context that utilizes the grammar meaningfully.
 Present the story, El boxeador, found in: Relatos Divertidos: 33 Spanish MiniStories with Exercises, by Mark Frobose, Carlex, Inc. 2006
 Many other fables and short stories also use this tense.
 Read the story to the students. You can provide additional clipart pictures and
separate sentences onto a powerpoint slide to demonstrate the content visually.
2. Have the students begin utilizing the grammar in context.
 Ask students questions based on context
 Examples: ¿Dónde pasaba la mayor parte de su tiempo el boxeador?
¿Se entrenaba mucho en el gimnasio? ¿Cómo sabemos?
¿Cuándo le pegaba a su oponente?
¿Por qué el boxeador tenía su cara triste?
¿Cómo era el boxeador? ¿Cómo eran sus brazos? Etc.
 Move from yes/no, either/or, and short answers, etc. Some students might need
extra support: ¿Cómo era el boxeador?, ¿era débil o era fuerte? ¿Dónde se
entrenaba, en su casa? etc.
3. Draw students’ attention to the grammar point.
 Provide story with script. Underline grammar points in the story. Use different
color to emphasize your points.
 Draw a timeline on the board to guide students when the story takes place.
Students already know present and talking about the past in the preterite tense.
Now is a good time to have them look at differences: “vivir – vivo vs. viví vs.
vivía”.
 Example: With the timeline, you can say “Yo vivo en Marietta ahora. En el año
2008, viví en Smyrna” .. and mark these times with “x”. Then say “Cuando era
niña, vivía en Honduras. Here, you are going to circle a whole portion of the
timeline. You can do this with other verbs, i.e. “comer” or “ir” to show difference
of past verbs.
 Guide students to understanding that talking about habitual patterns or
descriptions of the past, the imperfect tense is used.

Then, guide the students to figure out the structure of the imperfect verb tense by
writing a list of verbs with from the story and underlining the verb endings. It
helps to ask students what the infinitive forms are:
entrenar
vivir
devolver
entrenaba
vivía devolvía
boxeaba
pegaba
llevaba
4. Reinforce the grammar point through an extension activity.
 Write the theme on the board: Example: ¿Qué hacías tú cuando estabas en la
secundaria/la primaria? ¿Qué comías tú?¿Qué película o programa de televisión
veías tú? Etc.
 Utilize the Think/Pair/Share to get students to think about their own answers
before sharing with a partner. Providing the verbs in the questions helps students
to recognize the context while still personalizing their answers.
 You can help them with written questions and some verbs in the infinitive form,
such as boxear, jugar, correr, leer, escribir, salir, by adding them to the verb lists
already provided for the imperfect forms.
You can add question words for more practice: ¿Con quién comías?¿dónde
comías? Por qué? etc. This helps them to create longer sentences by stating
reasons.
5. Homework assignment.
 Ask your parents to describe two thing that they liked to do when they where
children, and write the answers in Spanish.
 Next day. Take advantage of the students’ answers and use these answers to
introduce the 3rd person singular and plural forms of the verbs. Similar to the
exercise with the parents, create a familiar situation where your students can learn
the new verb forms in a meaningful way. This could be something related to their
family life or daily school activities in their past.