Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
Online
User avatar
emk
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1622
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:07 pm
Location: Vermont, USA
Languages: English (N), French (B2+)
Badly neglected "just for fun" languages: Middle Egyptian, Spanish.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=723
x 6337
Contact:

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby emk » Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:30 pm

All of the advice in this thread is excellent. Here are a few more things that worked for me, in various languages:

  1. Write out any conjugation tables you're unsure of in Iversen's "green sheet" format: Just write out all the endings a few sheets of paper, and leave out the verb stems for the most part. Feel free to use different colors for surprising exceptions, or anything else that helps.
  2. Every week or so, just pick out a new table (say, the imperfect) and just memorize the endings.
  3. Use a spell checker, or if you're low tech, buy a copy of Bescherelle or BLED and leave it next to your desk. Even native French speakers look stuff up frequently! And honestly, a lot of them make mistakes if they're not writing formally.
It turns out that if you know the conjugation of about 30 verbs (and which other common verbs share those conjugations), you get 97% coverage of the verbs that appear in movie subtitles. Here's how those numbers were calculated. And many of those 30 are "like this other set of verbs, except for a different stem in past participle, or an odd passé simple conjugation you can completely ignore."

I was actually working on a website at one point, which laid out the top 40 conjugation patterns or so, with notes about which verbs belonged to which pattern, and short lists of just the exceptional forms. The whole thing was machine-verified, too. I really ought to finish it. :-/
4 x

User avatar
neofight78
Blue Belt
Posts: 539
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:02 pm
Location: Novosibirsk, Russia
Languages: English (N), Russian (B2+), Spanish (A0)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=833
x 1232

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby neofight78 » Tue Aug 04, 2015 6:54 pm

For Russian I made my own flashcards in Anki, with audio requested for each of the conjugations on Rhinospike. I said my answers out loud before flipping the card to read and hear the answer. I liked having the audio as the stress can change sometimes as well. I did this with x number of most frequent verbs plus a few others based on what I found difficult. Certainly drilling is the way to go. After a certain point I became good enough and ditched my conjugation deck but it served me well.
1 x

User avatar
aokoye
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1818
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:14 pm
Location: Portland, OR
Languages: English (N), German (~C1), French (Intermediate), Japanese (N4), Swedish (beginner), Dutch (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19262
x 3309
Contact:

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby aokoye » Tue Aug 04, 2015 7:13 pm

I agree with what everyone has said - doing exercises, while sometimes (or often) boring, really does work. When I first took Spanish in college (10 years ago) I did really poorly the first semester and over winter break resolved to get back up to speed. I ended up buying a few of the Practice Makes Perfect books and did the exercises. It was often not terribly enjoyable but it worked really really well. My improvement was actually kind of astonishing.
3 x
Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

User avatar
kimchizzle
Orange Belt
Posts: 124
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 12:05 am
Languages: English (N), French
Studying Spanish, Dutch, Russian
On the radar, Estonian, Ukrainian, Cantonese, Korean, Swedish
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/vi ... f=15&t=779
x 149

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby kimchizzle » Tue Aug 04, 2015 7:30 pm

Eventually, it will work itself out in the long run, but the time it takes will be different for everyone and you likely don't want to continue making the same mistakes when you've already isolated the problem.

I'd recommend practicing conjugations with stem changing verbs. Here is a reference link with some verbs that are stem changing like acheter among others, and the different patterns they fall into. https://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/ver2.html Once you recognize the pattern, you can conjugate all the verbs of that group.

I'd also recommend you to just create your own sentences using the words, especially by handwriting them, which will help the patterns get into your memory through the context of a sentence, instead of just copying conjugation patterns.

You could create sentences like this in French.
I buy two baguettes every day.
You (formal) buy four beers every weekend.
She buys chocolates before school.
They always buy a pizza to share with their friends.
I prefer to eat Raclette rather than pasta.
We prefer dogs, but our friends prefer cats.
She is trying to listen to the teacher, but the class is too noisy.

These are just examples, but I think coming up with your own sentences using stem changing verbs and writing them in French will help you out.
3 x
Spanish Duolingo: 42 / 100 Dutch Duolingo: 4 / 100
Feel free to help correct any of my languages, except my native tongue. :shock:

User avatar
arthaey
Brown Belt
Posts: 1080
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:11 pm
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
Languages: :
EN (native);
ES (adv receptive, int productive);
FR (false beginner);
DE (lapsed beg);
ASL (lapsed beg);
HU (tourist)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3864&view=unread#unread
x 1675
Contact:

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby arthaey » Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:31 pm

Another thing worth pointing out: don't bother to SRS something until you've understood it. For vocab, this is easy, because you know what a word means. For grammar, you need to really grok the system before it's worth making simple flashcards, IMO.

So yeah, I'd recommend doing some boring drills & charts & "green sheets" until you get it, then create flashcards to make sure you don't forget them again. :)
1 x
Posts in: FrenchGermanHungarianSpanish
NaNoWriMo: 10,000 words
Corrections welcome in any language; I prefer an informal register.

issemiyaki
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 9:02 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N); Spanish (Fluent); French (Fluent); Russian (hoping to reach fluency his year!)
x 327

Re: Poorly Conjugating Verbs - How To Stop It?

Postby issemiyaki » Wed Aug 05, 2015 4:09 am

Oh my goodness, the support here has been overwhelming. Thank you all.

I tend to learn things well when I have some context. So, I think I'm going to try to get "the Ultimate French Verb Review and Practice."

Also, like EMK suggested, I'll purchase Bescherelle as well, and do some old-fashioned verb tables.

Strangely enough, I had a similar problem while learning Spanish. The issue surfaced during my university-level Spanish syntax class, of all places. I was tired of getting bad grades. So, I actually made a book with nothing but blank lines for all the tenses. I even had the book bound at Kinko's. And then I got to work! I conjugated, in all the 16 or something tenses, something like 100 verbs by hand, maybe more. By the end of the semester, the teacher actually praised me in front of everyone for being the most-improve student that semester. It was very touching. Rarely, to this day, do I make conjugation mistakes in Spanish. But I was also a ferocious reader, which helped.

So, thank you all, again.

Also, I don't plan on going through those verb books from beginning to end. I will start with the verbs that give me problems. And I won't make the book the end point. I'll be writing small essays or stories, and then submitting them for corrections. But now I know what I have to do. Thanks for getting me on the right track. Awesome!
2 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: garyb, Kraut and 2 guests