📖LearnModule 6 · Lesson 5 of 30Independent User · CEFR B1, first halfUnit 1 · Contar — telling the past
Tu historia — the full frame
Module 6 of the free Spanish course (CEFR B1, first half), lesson 5 of 30: The whole machine at once: scene in the imperfecto, background in the pluscuamperfecto. On this page: 10 words with their genders and respellings, the rule, a watch-out line, the conjugation table and the audio — the study notes behind the workbook's QR.
The words
Spanish
English
Say it
había una vez
once upon a time
ah-BEE-ah OO-nah behs
la vez
the time (occasion)
lah BEHS
¿qué pasó?
what happened?
keh pah-SOH
pasar
to happen
pah-SAR
el recuerdo
the memory
ehl rreh-KWEHR-doh
me acuerdo
I remember
meh ah-KWEHR-doh
increíble
unbelievable
een-kreh-EE-bleh
curioso
curious (m)
koo-RYOH-soh
durmió toda la noche
he slept all night
door-MYOH TOH-dah lah NOH-cheh
la noche
the night
lah NOH-cheh
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
La regla · The rule
The whole machine at once: scene in the imperfecto, background in the pluscuamperfecto, events in the pretérito, markers to hold the line. Había una vez… (once upon a time) opens a story the way it always has.
Y también · And also
Tell one true story from last month — six sentences, out loud and then on paper. ¿Qué pasó? (what happened?) is the question every page of this unit answers. The stem-changing pretéritos help: durmió (slept), pidió (asked for), sintió (felt).
Ojo · Watch out
había una vez (once upon a time) is fixed: it takes the imperfecto and never changes. And the -ir stem-changers change only in the él and ellos forms of the pretérito: durmió, durmieron — but dormí, dormimos.
dormir, pretérito — the table
yo dormí · tú dormiste · él/ella/usted durmió · nosotros dormimos · ustedes durmieron · ellos/ellas durmieron
pedir, pretérito — the table
yo pedí · tú pediste · él/ella/usted pidió · nosotros pedimos · ustedes pidieron · ellos/ellas pidieron
Do it now — on paper
Say all 10 words aloud twice from the respelling, then once from the Spanish spelling alone — begin with había una vez.
Copy every word with its accents on paper; then cover the English column and write each meaning back from the Spanish.
Write out dormir, pretérito and pedir, pretérito in full from memory, every person, and check each form against the table above.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The Spanish Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Keep these words
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.