Hola estudiante,

Bienvenido/a to another edition of Master Spanish Weekly. Your weekly space to keep learning, practicing, and feeling more confident in Spanish, step by step.

🏃‍♂️ Marathon Mindset = Spanish learning

Lately, I’ve been changing my marathon training routine.

I used to run in the evenings, but now I’m running at 6:00 am and surprisingly, that small change gave me a huge boost in motivation.

There’s something about the novelty; the great weather (65 degrees this morning), the quiet streets, the feeling of starting the day already accomplished.

That makes the whole process feel new again.

But…I also had a setback.

My IT band pain came back (again 😅), so I had to pause running and focus on strength training for now.

It reminded me again: Learning a language is like training for a marathon.

You’ll have bursts of progress and moments when you have to slow down — but the key is to stay in the race.

Sometimes, you just need a small change. A new routine, a new podcast, or a conversation with a classmate to bring that motivation back.

I’m training for the Austin Marathon on February 15th, 2026, and I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

For now, strength training is my new Spanish practice — one rep at a time 💪

📚Lesson of the Week: The -ING Form in Spanish

In English, we use -ing a lot:
“I’m studying,” “He’s working,” “Swimming is fun,” “I like dancing.”

But in Spanish, we split that idea into two main forms:

1️⃣ The Gerundio → For actions happening right now

This is what we use for progressive actions. Things that are in progress.

Structure: Estar + verbo + -ando / -iendo

👉 Use it when something is happening right now.
Example: Estoy escribiendo este newsletter y tomando café. ☕

2️⃣ The Infinitive → For general actions or nouns

In English, we often use -ing after certain verbs and prepositions:

In Spanish, we don’t use the -ing form (the gerundio) in these cases.
Instead, we use the infinitive — the base form of the verb (-ar, -er, -ir).

🧠 Tip: In Spanish, after a preposition (a, de, en, por, sin, para, antes de, después de) ➡️ always use the infinitive, never the -ing form.

👉 [Download Your Free Cheat Sheet of This Week’s Lesson →]

🧩 Mini Quiz:

Can you pick the correct option? 👇

1️⃣ (Estoy / Soy) estudiando español todos los días.
2️⃣ Recuerdo (ver / viendo) esa película.
3️⃣ Antes de (dormir / durmiendo), leo un poco.
4️⃣ (Leer / Leyendo) es relajante y bueno para el cerebro.
5️⃣ Estamos (comiendo / comer) más saludable últimamente.

🎥 Reel of the Week

🎬 Watch this week’s quick reel on The -ING in Spanish.

I break down the difference between Estoy estudiando and Me gusta estudiar with simple examples you can use today

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Gracias por seguir aprendiendo conmigo cada semana.

Sigue practicando; poquito a poquito todo se vuelve más fácil.

¡Nos vemos en la próxima lección!

Alejandro Nuñez
Fundador y Director de New Way Spanish (muy pronto Vokally)

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