Verbs are an essential part of a language. And people don't usually like verbs in particular because we all remember how painful it was to remember all these forms and tenses for school assignments. It felt something like this:
But it doesn't have to be like that!
How to simplify learning verbs
You probably know by now that Speakly teaches languages with a unique method that prioritizes the statistically most relevant words. And this offers results four to five times faster than traditional learning methods. Read this blog post to learn more. 🚀
Basically, the Speakly method teaches the language so quickly because it doesn't waste time teaching you things that you don't actually need for real-life conversations.
It's no different with verbs. In reality, school taught you many verbs and tenses that you don't really need. 🤯
Based on our years of experience researching alongside thousands of language learners, it’s clear that, in order to speak a language, you actually need only a small part of the verbs and different tenses that a language has.👌
"And what is this small part?" You might ask.
According to our research, you only need to know around 50 or 60 different verbs to feel confident in almost any real-life conversation. And the good news is that Speakly teaches you exactly these most important verbs to help you find the confidence to use them in all sorts of situations! 😎
Focus only on the most important tenses of the verb
As you know, a typical verb conjugation table has so many different forms and tenses that you can get lost in it. BUT as I’ve mentioned above, you don't need all these forms and tenses. In reality, you just need the most important tenses of a verb, which are:
➡️ the most-used present tense,
➡️ the most-used past tense,
➡️ the most-used future tense, and
➡️ one more tense (for example the conditional tense, if you want to sound super-smart). 🤓
That's why we recommend that you always train these three or four most important tenses when you're learning with Speakly. If you know how to use them, all other tenses become effectively irrelevant for your language usage. And that's exactly WHY the Speakly grammar tables contain only a small selection of tenses—to simplify verbs for you.
Do this to train verb tenses with Speakly
As you study words and sentences with Speakly, do the following each time you see a verb.
1️⃣ Open the Grammar section (by clicking the little book icon under the Study Area) and navigate to Tables.
2️⃣ Find the verb form that you're studying right now. Recognize which tense it is and try to memorize it.
3️⃣ Now find the same form in other important tenses. For example, if you are learning the present tense form for we are in French (nous sommes), find the same person (i.e., first-person plural, we) in the past and future tenses: we have been (nous avons été) and we will be (nous serons), respectively.
4️⃣ Take a moment to memorize these three forms. If it's helpful, write them down in a notebook or create a table of your own.
5️⃣ While it might seem logical to memorize all other forms as well, don't do it. It's too much information at once, and you won't remember it. So, after checking these three forms, continue your studies in the Speakly Study Area.
If you do all that, then you can be sure that you’re giving yourself everything you need to use that verb in real-life conversations as well. Just think about it: now you know three verb forms that are ESSENTIAL in real-life conversations: we are, we were, and we will be. 😉
Enjoy your studies!
