Continuers Spanish: Tense Control, Mood and Register
What you must control
At continuers level, accuracy in tense and mood carries the most weight. You need confident control of the preterite versus imperfect distinction, the present perfect, the pluperfect, the future and conditional, and the present subjunctive after expressions of wish, doubt, emotion and impersonal statements (es importante que..., dudo que..., ojalá...). You must also handle pronoun placement and clitics (se lo di, dámelo, me lo dijo), relative clauses with que/ quien/ el cual, and contrastive connectors (sin embargo, no obstante, por lo tanto, a pesar de).
Traps that appear in questions
- Preterite vs imperfect: preterite for completed, bounded events; imperfect for background, habits and ongoing states. Cuando era niño, vivía en Córdoba (background) versus Ayer viví una experiencia increíble (single event). A sentence can mix both: Leía cuando sonó el teléfono.
- Subjunctive triggers: creo que + indicative, but no creo que + subjunctive. Aunque takes indicative for known facts, subjunctive for hypothetical ones.
- Sequence of tenses: a past main verb usually pulls the subordinate into imperfect subjunctive: Quería que vinieras.
- Conditional versus imperfect: si + imperfect + conditional for unreal present (Si tuviera tiempo, viajaría); never use the conditional right after si.
- Register: exam tasks asking for a formal letter require usted, le agradezco, and avoidance of contractions of speech.
Rule of thumb
For every verb, ask: is the action finished or background? Is the clause factual or hypothetical/doubted? The answer selects tense and mood before you worry about vocabulary.
Worked example
Prompt: Complete: 'Si ___ (tener) más dinero, ___ (irse) de viaje.' Step 1: si clause describing an unreal present situation → imperfect indicative: tuviera/tuviese. Step 2: main clause consequence → conditional: me iría. Result: Si tuviera más dinero, me iría de viaje. Note the reflexive pronoun moves with the conditional form, not before si.