Question

Pretend you are in Guatemala. You had to call home. In Spanish, tell the steps you followed to make the phone call, using the past tense. Include as many details as possible. You will be graded on accuracy and pronunciation. I wrote Cojo el teléfono y marco mi madre y mi saludo a ella y le digo a mis amigos y luego me despido y cuelgo. I just want to make sure its right.

Answer 1

Spanish is my first language so I will help you. Let's see the first part. Cojo el telefono y marco mi madre. This is pretty much correct but to make it more precise I would add "el numero de" after "marco". So, "Cojo el telefono y marco el numero de mi madre." This translates to "I grab the phone and I put my mother's number in it." 

Answer 2

To solve this exercise we will use the preterite tense (el pretérito) that is used to describe actions completed at a point in the past. The Spanish preterite is not used to describe regular or continuous actions in the past with no specific beginning or end. In that cases, we use the imperfect. So as you, in fact, called home in an specific moment we should use the preterite tense.

In Spanish, you can recognize only two sets of endings for Regular Preterite Verbs, one for ar verbs and one for both er and ir verbs. If you want to conjugate a regular verb in the preterite tense, you must remove the infinitive ending (ar, er, or ir) and add the preterite ending that matches the subject. Check out Table 1 (below) of regular preterite endings. Take into account that the first person singular (yo), third person singular (él, ella), and second person formal singular (usted) preterite forms have tildes (that is, written accents) on the final vowel. Consider that one little tilde can change both the tense and subject of a sentence.

The most common verbs with Irregular Imperfect Conjugations are ser, ir, dar, and ver as indicated in Table 2 (below).

Suppose you live in Quetzaltenango and your mother lives in Ciudad de Guatemala. In this way, the steps we take to call home is as follows:

STEP 1:

Yo cogí el teléfono y marqué el número de mi madre.

Verbs: Coger - Marcar

STEP 2:

Esperé el tono de la operadora.

Verb: Esperar

STEP 3:

Saludé a mi madre y le pregunté por mi padre y mis hermanos.

Verb: Saludar - Preguntar

STEP 4:

Hablamos un buen rato sobre mi trabajo.

Verb: Hablar

STEP 5:

Me despedí de ella y le mandé saludos a mis hermanos.

Verb: Despedir - Mandar

STEP 6

Colgué el teléfono.

Verb: Colgar