Verb Forms and Tenses

Verb Forms and Tenses

Knowing that the German word essen means eat is only half the job. To actually use the word you also need ate and eaten -- and for irregular verbs those are exactly the forms people get wrong. Snap to Learn has two tools for this:

• Verb forms practice -- when a verb comes up in practice, you write its forms one after another (base form, past simple, past participle) instead of a single translation.
• Tense exercises -- a fill-in-the-blanks exercise where every blank is one of your verbs, and you write it in the tense the sentence needs.

Which languages?

• Verb forms practice works for English (base form, past simple, past participle) and Latin (the principal parts: infinitive, present, perfect and supine, for example amāre, amō, amāvī, amātum).
• Tense exercises work for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Latin.

For French, Spanish, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Latin there is also the Verbs tab, which drills every form of a verb in each tense.

Verb forms practice

Verb forms practice is on by default. Start a practice session (or practise a single word) as usual. Ordinary words ask for a translation the way they always have. When the word is a verb, the prompt changes. (The screenshots on this page come from the Demo-Deck for German speakers learning English, so the word shown is the German essen and the answers are in English.)

• The instruction above the word tells you which form to write -- Write the Base form, then Write the Past simple, then Write the Past participle.
• The row under the answer field (Base › Past › Participle) shows where you are. The form you are on is underlined, and the ones you have finished turn solid.
• The verb forms button in the top-right corner (a stack icon, the same one as the Verb Forms setting) shows that verb forms practice is on for this word.

Type or handwrite the form and tap Check Answer, just like a normal word. A correct form flashes green and the next one appears automatically.

When you get a form wrong

A wrong form is crossed out, the correct one appears right below it, and you stay on the same form until you get it right. Tap Try Again, write it once more, and carry on.

Finishing the verb

Once you have written the last form, you see the familiar Well done!. The session then moves on to the next word.

How it counts towards mastery

All the forms of a verb together count as one answer:

• Get every form right first time, and the verb earns a correct spelling towards its 7, just as a normal word would.
• Make a mistake on any form, and the verb counts as a miss for that round, even if you corrected it straight away. That way a verb is only mastered once you know all of its forms, not just the translation.

Verb forms practice also works in Test mode: verbs are tested form by form there too.

The verb forms button

The stack icon in the top-right corner is a button. What it does depends on the word:

No button at all means the current word is not a verb.

Verbs in your own decks

The Demo-Deck comes with every verb form filled in. When you scan your own pages, the app looks up the forms for the deck's verbs automatically the first time you practise one of them. You will see a spinner in place of the stack icon while that happens. The forms are usually ready by the next word, and there is nothing you need to do.

Choosing which forms and verbs

You can change how verb forms practice works on the Profile tab, in the Learning English section. The Verb Forms row shows whether it is on and which forms you are practising.

Tap it to open the settings:

• Practise verb forms -- the main switch. Turn it off and verbs go back to being asked as a single translation.
• Forms to practise -- the base form is always asked. You can switch off the past simple or the past participle if you want to focus on just one of them.
• Which verbs -- Irregular verbs only (the default) drills the verbs that actually need it: go / went / gone, eat / ate / eaten. Choose All verbs if you also want to write out regular ones like walk / walked / walked.

These settings apply to all your decks with that target language.

Learning Latin? The setting is in the Learning Latin section and works the same way. A verb is asked in the order of the principal parts in your textbook: Inf. › Praes. › Perf. › PPP. Macrons are optional in your answers: amavi counts as amāvī.

Tense exercises

Writing ate in isolation is one thing. Knowing that "I ___ (eat) a sandwich yesterday" needs ate, and "I ___ (eat) already" needs have eaten, is another. Tense exercises practise exactly that.

They are a kind of fill-in-the-blanks exercise, so you will find them in the same place: open a deck, go to the Exercises tab and tap New exercise. In the list, tense exercises have a blue clock icon, and their line starts with Tenses.

Creating a tense exercise

At the top of the Create an exercise sheet, switch from Vocabulary to Tenses.

1. Pick the tenses. Tenses are grouped into Present, Past and Future. Each one has an example sentence under its name (I have driven to work.), so you can tell them apart at a glance. When the sheet opens, the first past tense of the language is ticked (in English, Past simple). Tick up to three tenses; the counter above the list shows how many you picked (for example "2 of 3 selected"), and Clear unticks them all.

2. Choose Sentences or Story. Sentences gives you separate numbered sentences, which is easiest when you are starting out. Story weaves the verbs into one connected text.

3. Pick your words. The words you select are split into two groups:

• Blanks (verbs) -- every verb you choose becomes a blank, to be written in whichever tense the sentence needs.
• Context -- any other words you choose are used in the sentences but never blanked, so the text still feels like your own vocabulary.

You need at least one word and can choose up to 15. Random 15 fills the selection for you. If you don't pick any verbs, the app uses common verbs for the blanks instead.

4. Choose a difficulty and tap Generate. Easy, Medium and Hard work exactly as they do for vocabulary exercises. The exercise appears in the list when it is ready, usually after about 30 seconds.

Playing a tense exercise

Tap a tense exercise to see what is in it before you start: the tenses it practises and the verbs it uses.

Tap Start exercise. Each blank shows the verb's base form in brackets as a hint, for example ___ (eat). Your job is to write the form the sentence needs:

• The sentence tells you the tense. "...for lunch yesterday" needs the past simple (ate), while "...three cups already" needs the present perfect (have drunk).
• Write the whole verb phrase, including any helper verb: have gone, has come.
• The base form in brackets is the hint, not the answer. Writing eat where the sentence needs ate is marked wrong.

Everything else works as in any other exercise: typing or handwriting, Skip, the hint and +1 letter buttons, and the progress bar at the bottom. When you finish, the results screen also shows how you did in each tense, so you can see whether the past simple or the present perfect needs more work.

Tense exercises in other languages

Tense exercises work the same way in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Latin, each with four tenses that schools teach first:

What goes into a blank:

• The whole verb form. In compound tenses, the helper verb and the participle together: suis allée, he comido, sono andata, ist gegangen. In the Bulgarian future, the particle with the verb: ще чета.
• A reflexive pronoun belongs to the blank: me suis levé, me levanto, mi lavo, sich gewaschen hat, се мия.
• Never the subject. The subject pronoun stays outside the blank, and so do objects and a negation.
• German: the parts of a verb stay together in the blank. That is why German tense exercises often use clauses with the verb at the end: ..., weil sie gestern gegangen ist.
• Latin: one word per blank, and macrons are optional.

Answers accept the usual other spellings, for example ss for ß in German.

What it costs

Verb forms practice

• The Demo-Deck is always free. Practise its verbs form by form as often as you like -- they never count against anything.
• On the free plan, you can drill 3 verbs from your own decks (scanned, created or imported) form by form. A verb only counts once you have learned it this way -- spelled all its forms correctly 7 times, or skipped it as already known. You keep practising a verb for as long as it takes to learn it, and practising the same verb again never uses up a second one.
• With a subscription, verb forms practice is unlimited.

Once your 3 free verbs are used up, the next verb shows a small lock on the verb forms button, and tapping it shows the Plus options. The Verb Forms setting on the Profile tab then reads Off, and turning it back on also takes you to the Plus options. Your verbs are still practised as normal translations in the meantime, so nothing stops working.

Tense exercises use the same generations as other fill-in-the-blanks exercises: 3 free generations to try the feature, then 50 a month with a subscription. Playing and replaying a tense exercise you already have is always free. See Fill-in-the-Blanks Exercises for the details.