Some errors come back no matter how much you study the rule. They’re entrenched, and for those the Clinic has an operating theatre: Surgery.
Some errors won’t go away with a pill. However much you study the rule, they come back: ser and estar, the preterite and the imperfect, the subjunctive that resists. They’re entrenched errors, and for those the Clinic has an operating theatre: Surgery.
Not a pharmacy: an operation
A pharmacy is open — you go in, read, learn. Surgery is different: it operates on a single error, yours, the one you actually carry. It isn’t a generic grammar list, but the operation that comes out of your diagnosis.
Three phases, like any operating theatre
- Pre-op: understanding why you get it wrong. Most fossilised errors have a logic — often an interference from your mother tongue. Naming it is half the cure.
- The operation: the clear rule, no waffle, with examples from life in Granada. «La sopa está fría» (a state) versus «Granada es preciosa» (what it’s like).
- Post-op and review: an interactive exercise with instant feedback. Pass it and the operation is «healed», adding to your clinical history.
Errors don’t follow levels
An important detail: in Surgery we don’t hide operations «below your level». A C1 student can still confuse ser and estar — it happens all the time. Revisiting a basic topic isn’t going backwards: it’s closing a wound that had been open for a while. That’s why you can enter any operation, and we label which is «your level», which is «review» and which is «advanced».
From ser and estar to discharge
The list of theatres keeps growing: ser/estar, the past tenses, the subjunctive of wish and doubt, por and para, prepositions, agreement, relative clauses, the three pasts. If an error keeps repeating, it’s asking for an operation. Take your diagnosis and we’ll refer you to the one you need.
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