Test Question

Question

The test question "I always wanted to be a dentist." I answered "he querido" but correct answer was "quise"

Isn't that a past action that continues into the present? - perfecto?

Anyway this particular topic seems to be all over the place. The goal of these questions shouldn't be trickery IMHO. We're learning to speak a language - not to be a textbook scholar - or at least that's my goal. I asked one of the many Spanish speakers where I work what they thought and they said "it could be either and I'd understand you."

Answer

Hola DavidWe understand this specific content is difficult because of the different possible interpretations, with the nuance of being or not connected to the present. For a Spanish from Spain learner this is a more straight forward usage, however for Latin American Spanish learners the nuances get more complicated. What we've stated in this particular lesson is the most common usages of the perfect and the preterite tenses in Spanish, with a clear tendency to use the latter. We've also considered some specific cases where the perfect is preferred. In one of the sections we explicitly write that with adverbs "siempre" and "nunca" the tense used is the preterite in most parts of Latin America (not the perfect). This is the reason why the perfect tense is marked as wrong. Nevertheless, we have plans to improve this lesson to make it clearer, despite having written this lesson initially with consultation from a Latin American teacher. We understand that it's still difficult so we've planned to improve it.Kind regards

Answer

Querer is also a tricky verb to use in the past. It’s probably better to think about how other verbs are used before getting around to querer.  https://spanish.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/using-querer-in-el-preterito-indefinido-vs-el-preterito-imperfecto