VerbMaster: Spanish Verbs

After 2 years of fumbling around and trying different methods to learn (comprehensible input, textbook learning, reading, listening practice, and trying to self-study Spanish grammar), I’ve found VerbMaster. This app is specifically helpful to me because I could never get through enough textbook material to make it to different tenses before I would get bored and never open the textbook again. VerbMaster is as fast paced as you want to go. I’ve made it a little over 60 percent through their phase 1 “crash course” and I’ve already learned how to conjugate present, preterit, imperfect, simple future, conditional, subjunctive including all stem-changers and irregulars. Because it’s so fast paced, in order for the information to stick, I do all the reviews at the beginning and end of each day/throughout the day. Each tense has a short reading lesson with examples. It’s all so concise and easy to understand. I’m shocked this app hasn’t taken off yet. How when I open a middle school level chapter book in Spanish, I’m able to recognize what tenses verbs are in and it helps with my comprehension immensely!

I’m on a 117 day streak so far, and I cannot believe I have automatic recall of previously unfamiliar verbs in the preterite, imperfect, simple conditional, subjunctive and more. Absolutely brilliant system that is like having a teacher who remembers what I know well and what I need to revisit…in just the right amounts. But no human teacher could possibly do so (and who would have the patience and ingenuity to help me in this way?). When I started out, I felt frustrated when I knew an answer, but wasn’t paying attention to the requested tense, or made a typo error. It was marked “incorrect”. I communicated with the developer about my frustration, and it was changed to display “try again”. PERFECT. Thank you, now I don’t feel discouraged anymore. I must point out a huge bonus: Every conjugation test includes a sentence in Spanish using the verb in that tense. I couldn’t understand any of them when I started, but I would hit the repeat button with the audio slowed down until I started understanding them. Now, I am understanding most at regular speed. Now that’s some serious progress in listening skills. I’m on my way to learning 600 verbs in the important tenses with instant recall, while greatly improving my listening comprehension (thousands of additional vocabulary words—¡”casa embrujada”!). I predicted this app would be my key to attaining fluency, and I am making it happen. Thanks to all the developers!

I just finished the whole thing - it took six months from start to finish and I worked with VerbMaster virtually every single day. Not only do I now have 64 infinitives in 12 tenses under my belt, genuinely mastered, but I have such a big piece of the language under my control (as much as Spanish verbs can ever be...). There were times that I wanted to kill VerbMaster lol, but really that's just the whole Spanish verb journey for you - if you persist, it gets harder but eventually it gets easier. The app is simply but thoughtfully designed to take you through it and drill the daylights out of you, returning to the problem words until my thick head finally could distinguish whether, for example, the conjugation of seguir it was asking for started with se or si. The look of the app is unlike most others, kind of a 20s Deco vibe which I grew fond of, as well as the funny words of encouragement after each round. I am so grateful that I found this app, that it does so well what it says it does, and that I stuck with it. One of the encouragements at the end of a round says, "I am very good at life." I wouldn't go that far; but I'm now pretty darn good at Spanish verbs. Thank you, Verbmaster!