Why You Keep Making the Same Mistakes in Spanish (and What No One Properly Explains)

In most cases, errors are not due to a lack of effort, but to the fact that students have not received a complete or accurate explanation. There are many aspects of the language that are not always taught in sufficient depth, or that are considered intuitive when they are not. As a result, students have no guidance and must guess when speaking. What they tend to do in those cases is to copy structures from their mother tongue, and they end up speaking incorrectly. Let us focus on five typical cases:

1. The use of articles:

Let us begin by stating something very basic: languages are all different. This means: different structures, different pronunciation, different vocabulary, different verbal system, different pronominal system, etc. This affects all levels of the language, even aspects that seem simpler, such as articles. Classical Latin had no articles. There are also no articles in many current languages, such as Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, Finnish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. In addition, languages that do have articles, such as English and Spanish, do not use them in the same way:

Why do students get confused? Because they probably did not have a lesson on this topic.

2. The use of prepositions:

This is a particularly complex topic. Here we are dealing with a group of words that are extremely difficult to translate, because they have a grammatical function, but their intrinsic meaning is not always clear. Let us look at the main prepositions in Spanish (because perhaps no one has taught them which ones they are):

Here we find many problems. Some of these prepositions have a single use: “sin” is “without” and “con” is “with”. That is very easy: “tomo el café sin azúcar y con leche”. But there are other much more complex prepositions. Let us look at examples:

En can be on, in, at. But this is only the beginning of the real difficulties:

To learn how to use prepositions, they must be studied one by one and all their uses in Spanish must be learned in each context. In general, textbooks for the British GCSE do not teach this and lead to error by oversimplifying the system. Right now I am looking at one of those books and I read literally: “a: at, to”. This explanation is insufficient and creates confusion. Observe this:

3. The distinction between “por” and “para” in particular:

Many materials used in the British GCSE present por and para as equivalents of for. Let us see if this is true:

This shows that the usual explanation is not complete. As you can see here, these two prepositions must be studied by analysing their use properly, without simplifications that lead to error. It is also important to know that there are cases in which the preposition for is used in English, while in Spanish there is no preposition at all:

Why does this happen? Because in some languages there are verbs that are always followed by a preposition, something known as prepositional government. Examples: to depend on something, to fall in love with someone, to wait for something, etc. But that government does not behave in the same way in every language.

So, if students are told that in is en and that of is de, they will hardly be able to speak with precision.

4. The mistaken idea that “tener” is “to have”:

This generates a large number of errors and misunderstandings. Again, I see this in many textbooks for the British GCSE, so the problem lies there, embedded in what students are told. Tener is not to have. Let us look at examples:

There are cases in which tener is to have, such as when I say “tengo un perro”, but these are some cases, not the general rule.

5. The use of pronouns:

The Spanish pronominal system is complex and cannot be compared with the English system; it must be studied carefully. If this is not done, students perpetuate fossilised errors of this kind:

In Spanish, the indirect object requires the presence of the pronoun, but in English it does not.

Correcting these errors is not a matter of memorising more, but of understanding how the language really works. To explore this topic further, here is a video.
Ten frequent mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC12uCTVhtQ&t=10s