Elma Eagles  

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Grammar Summary

Spanish 1 Unidad 2 Etapa 1

Conjugating Regular -AR Verbs in Present Tense

You were introduced to this concept in the Etapa Preliminar. 

The basic form of a verb is called "the infinitive."  In this chapter you are learning 10 -AR verbs.  Their infinitive forms are given in the vocab list. 

To conjugate a "regular" -AR verb in the Present Indicative Tense, you replace the ending "-ar,"   with a different ending that indicates the person doing the action:

Expressing Frequency with Adverbs

  To talk about how often someone does something, you use expressions of frequency.  These are adverbs or adverbial phrases.  An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, giving more detail about the action described by the verb.

In Spanish, certain adverbs are placed in different parts of a sentence.

Longer phrases can be placed at the beginning OR at the end of the sentence:

    Todos los días / a veces / de vez en cuando estudio el español.                      Estudio el español todos los días / a veces / de vez en cuando

Expressing Obligation with hay que and tener que

To talk about things someone must do, you can use two different phrases that express obligation.