Correct My Spanish Writing: What a Good Correction Catches

What a correction of Spanish should catch

The errors below have one awkward thing in common: every wrong sentence is built from real Spanish words, so nothing looks misspelled. That’s why they survive your own rereading, and it’s the test of whether a correction is worth having. In the examples, struck-through words are what was written and bold is the fix.

1. Accents that change the word

Mi hermano hablo habló con el él ayer.

Hablo is “I speak”; habló is “he spoke”. El is “the”; él is “he”. Both halves of each pair are real words, so a spellchecker sees nothing wrong. The pairs to watch: tu/tú, el/él, si/sí, mi/mí, te/té, mas/más — and the regular past tense for he, she and usted (compró, comió, salió).

2. The personal a

El domingo visité a mi abuela y ayudé a mi vecino.

When the direct object is a specific person, Spanish puts a in front of it. English has nothing like it, so the a simply never occurs to you. It isn’t used for things (visité el museo), and normally not after tener (tengo dos hermanos).

3. The preposition the verb comes with

Siempre pienso de en mi familia. Anoche soñé de con el mar.

Many Spanish verbs bring their own preposition, and it is rarely the English one: pensar en (think about), soñar con (dream of), enamorarse de (fall in love with), casarse con (marry), depender de (depend on). Pensar de exists, but only for opinions: ¿Qué piensas de la película?

4. Possessives with the body and clothes

Me lavé mis las manos y me puse mi el abrigo.

The me already says whose hands, so Spanish uses the article. The same goes for pain: me duele la cabeza, not me duele mi cabeza. Mis manos isn’t ungrammatical; it just reads as translated.

5. English sentences in Spanish words

Apliqué para Solicité un trabajo. Tu plan hace tiene sentido. ¡Tuvimos un buen tiempo Lo pasamos muy bien!

Each is an English phrase rebuilt word by word. Aplicar is for applying a rule or a cream; for a job, it’s solicitar, or postularse in much of Latin America (you will hear aplicar a un trabajo there too, but teachers and editors usually mark it). Things tienen sentido. A good time is pasarlo bien — pasarla bien in much of Latin America. Nothing here is misspelled or ungrammatical, which is exactly why it gets through.

6. False friends

Actualmente En realidad, no fui a la librería biblioteca: me quedé en casa.

• actualmente means currently; actually is en realidad.
• librería is a bookshop; a library is a biblioteca.
• embarazada means pregnant; embarrassed is avergonzado/a, or me da vergüenza.
• asistir means to attend; to assist is ayudar.
• realizar means to carry out; to realise is darse cuenta.

7. Cuando about the future

Cuando llego llegue a Madrid, te llamo.

English uses the present for a moment that hasn’t happened yet (“when I arrive”); Spanish uses the subjunctive. Cuando llego a casa, ceno is right, because that’s a habit. The question is whether it has happened yet. En cuanto and hasta que work the same way, and antes de que always takes the subjunctive.

8. -ing where Spanish wants the infinitive

Mi pasatiempo favorito es leyendo leer. Nadando Nadar me relaja.

When the action is a noun — the subject of the sentence, or after es — Spanish uses the infinitive. The -ando/-iendo form is for something in progress: estoy leyendo.

9. Hay or está

Hay el libro El libro está en la mesa.

Hay introduces something new: hay un libro en la mesa. Once the thing is specific — el libro, mi teléfono, Madrid — use estar.

10. Punctuation and capitals

El Lunes lunes empiezo mi clase de Español español. Vienes? ¿Vienes?

Days, months, languages and nationalities are lower case. Questions and exclamations open as well as close: ¿…? and ¡…!. Small, but they’re the first thing a native reader notices.

And what isn’t an error

A good correction also knows when to leave a sentence alone. Spain and Latin America differ, and both are standard:

• vosotros in Spain; ustedes in Latin America (and for formal “you all” in Spain).
• ordenador / computadora, zumo / jugo, conducir / manejar, coche / carro / auto.
• coger is an everyday verb in Spain (to take, to catch); in much of Latin America it’s vulgar, and tomar or agarrar is safer.

A correction that “fixes” vosotros for someone learning the Spanish of Spain is a bad correction. Tell any human corrector which variety you’re aiming for.

A five-minute self-edit before you submit

Run these passes on any paragraph before you hand it to someone, or before you paste it into the box at the top. Each pass looks for one thing only, which is what keeps it fast.

1. Accent pass. Read only the verbs and the short words. Regular past-tense verbs for he, she and usted carry an accent (habló, comió); irregular ones don’t (hizo, tuvo, fue). For every el, tu, si, mi: does it mean “he, you, yes, me”? Then it needs one.
2. People pass. Find every verb whose object is a specific person. Is the a there?
3. English-shape pass. Search your text for aplicar, hace sentido, buen tiempo and realizar, and reread any phrase you composed in English first.
4. Preposition pass. Every verb of thinking, dreaming, depending or falling in love: check its preposition against the list above.
5. Read it aloud. A sentence that sounds like the subtitle of an English film is usually a calque.

What you catch yourself sticks better than what anyone else catches, because you went looking for it.

One paragraph, three kinds of feedback

Here is a short learner paragraph:

El sábado pasado apliqué para un trabajo en una librería. Conocí el dueño y hablamos de mis libros favoritos. Después llamé a mi madre. ¡Tuve un buen tiempo!

Three errors. Here’s what three different kinds of feedback do with them.

Just the fix. Solicité un trabajo… Conocí al dueño… ¡Lo pasé muy bien! Correct, and nearly useless on its own: you’ll swap in the new words and write tuve un buen tiempo again next week.

The fix with the reason. Aplicar doesn’t cover job applications. Conocer takes the personal a because el dueño is a person, and a + el becomes al. Tener un buen tiempo is English word order; Spanish says pasarlo bien. Now each fix carries over to the next sentence like it.

The fix with the pattern. Two of those three errors aren’t grammar at all — they’re English sentences in Spanish words. If this is the third paragraph this month with a calque in it, the real problem is composing in English blocks, and the remedy is the English-shape pass above, not another grammar chapter.

The third kind is the one that changes your Spanish, and you only get it if someone — or something — keeps a record of what comes back. Building that record is the “track” step in how to get better at writing in Spanish.

Where to get corrected

Five kinds of source, each with one well-known example so you know what to search for. The columns describe the category, not any one service.

• Tutor. The deepest correction, and the best at telling you why you keep making an error. Limited by how many lessons you book.
• Exchange partner. The best ear for what sounds natural. Less reliable at explaining rules, and each correction costs you one in return.
• Correction community. Good for one nagging question, where you’ll often get several regional answers. Slow for a daily paragraph.
• Grammar checker. Good at typos and agreement; weak on the meaning-level errors in sections 1, 5 and 6.
• Learner writing software. Fast enough that the correction arrives while you still remember what you meant, and it counts your repeats for you.

How to choose

• You write a little most days. Choose whatever gets each paragraph back the same day.
• You write a few longer pieces a month. A tutor, and spend the lesson questioning the corrections rather than just receiving them.
• You have one specific question. A community, for the range of answers.
• Whichever you choose, keep the list of what comes back. Anything that appears three times is your real syllabus.

Why a spellchecker isn’t enough for Spanish

A spellchecker, and most grammar tools written for people who already speak the language, assumes you meant what you typed. That handles typos. It fails on exactly the families above: hablo and habló are both words, visité mi abuela parses, tuve un buen tiempo is grammatical and still wrong, and estoy embarazada is a perfect sentence that says something you didn’t mean. A correction worth having reads for what you were trying to say.

Fluency Write is built for that: you write a paragraph, each correction comes back inline with its reason, and it keeps its own record of the mistakes you repeat, so the pattern above is spotted for you rather than by you. It covers Spanish and eight other languages. It’s a paid subscription, and the box at the top of this page shows you a real correction first.

FAQ

Will a corrector from Spain mark my Latin American Spanish wrong? A good one won’t — ustedes, computadora and manejar are standard Spanish. Tell any human corrector which variety you’re learning, and treat a “correction” of a regional word as a preference rather than an error.

A native speaker says “nobody says that”, but the grammar book says it’s fine. Who’s right? Usually both. Grammar tells you what’s possible; a native ear tells you what’s normal. Note down the natural version — that’s something no rulebook would have given you — but ask where they’re from, because “nobody” often means “nobody here”.

Should I rewrite the paragraph after it’s corrected? Yes — the next day, from memory, without looking at the corrected version. If the same error comes back in the rewrite, it goes on your list.

Keep going

• The system this fits into: How to get better at writing in Spanish — write, correct, track.
• Something to correct: 50 Spanish journal prompts by level, A1 to C1.
• Corrections by level: Spanish journal entry examples, from A1 to B2.
• Starting from zero: How to keep a journal in Spanish.