Indefinido vs imperfecto: ejercicios de repaso

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Spanish preterite and imperfect past tenses are drilled across seven exercise types: filling in the correct conjugated form, conjugating a verb in the appropriate tense within a sentence, labeling a sentence "indefinido" or "imperfecto," converting a sentence from one past tense to the other, selecting between two conjugated options, completing a sentence with the correct tense, and finding and correcting a tense error. Each fill-in and conjugation exercise uses contextual cues, words like "ayer" (yesterday) signaling the preterite or "cuando era niño" (when I was a child) signaling the imperfect, to guide the correct choice, covering common irregular verbs such as ir, ser, hacer, and ver alongside regular -ar, -er, and -ir verbs. A complete "Clave de respuestas" (answer key) at the end of the file gives the correct form for every blank across all seven sections. The worksheet is written entirely in Spanish with no English instructions or translations.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Distinguish when to use the Spanish preterite (pretérito indefinido) versus the imperfect (pretérito imperfecto)
Correctly conjugate regular and irregular verbs in the preterite and imperfect tenses
Identify and correct an incorrectly conjugated past-tense verb in a Spanish sentence

Teaching tips

Review the common time-cue words (ayer, cuando era niño, todos los días) before assigning the worksheet, since several exercises depend on recognizing these cues
Use the labeling exercise (indefinido vs. imperfecto) as a quick formative check before the harder conjugation and error-correction sections
Save the error-correction page for last, since it requires students to apply both tenses correctly rather than choose from given options

Skills covered

Preterite vs. imperfect selection — students choose the correct past tense based on contextual time cues across multiple sentence sets.
Verb conjugation — students conjugate regular and irregular Spanish verbs correctly in the preterite and imperfect tenses.
Error correction — students find and fix an incorrectly conjugated verb in a given Spanish sentence.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What cues in the sentences signal whether to use the preterite or the imperfect?

Time markers such as "ayer" (yesterday) and "el año pasado" (last year) point to the preterite, while phrases like "cuando era niño" (when I was a child) and "todos los días" (every day) point to the imperfect, and the exercises are built around noticing these cues.

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Resource details

Concepts & topics

Core concepts

pretérito indefinido
pretérito imperfecto
Spanish verb conjugation

Topics

pretérito indefinido vs pretérito imperfecto

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Pretérito indefinido vs pretérito imperfecto: ejercicios

What's inside this resource