What is the difference between the Preterite and Imperfect tense in Spanish?please help?

Question

I'm really confused

Answer 1

Preterite has been completely done, imperfect means used to or n event that has not been completed.

Preterite:
Yo nadó= I swam

This sentence tells you that I swam and that's it.

Imperfect:
Yo nadaba= I used to swim

This sentence says that even though I used to swim, you don't know whether I stopped swimming or not.

Good luck ^_^

Answer 2

Preterite in spanish when you say something that has passed, that already happened.
Imperfect presents an action happening, continuing where the beginning or end is not important at all.

Hope this helps you.

Answer 3

preterite: is usually used to action that happenen once in the past, or a a specific date in the past.

imperfect: used for action that happened continually in the past. (or for an unspecified amount of time)
Example: Todos los veranos, yo iba a la playa. (Every summer i went to the beach)

It also is used to describe feelings, physical characteristics, or wants or desires in the past.
I was tall, I was happy,
I wanted a teddy bear for christmas.

One way I teach my students to remember it is that the preterite is pronounced short and quickly (gritó, miró), so you know it only happened once
Imperfect sounds longer and more continuous (gustaba, comía) so you know it happend for a long, continous amount of time