The difference between the preterite and the imperfect (and in certain cases, the perfect) is often hard to grasp for English speakers. English has just one past-tense form, which can have aspect added to it by auxiliary verbs, but not in ways that reliably correspond to what occurs in Spanish. The distinction between them does, however, correspond rather well to the distinctions in other Romance languages, such as between the French "imparfait" and "passé simple" / "passé composé" or between the Italian "imperfetto" and "passato remoto" / "passato prossimo".