In this article, we conduct a comparative analysis of the category of verbal aspect in the Russian and Spanish languages. We assume that a comparative analysis of linguistic phenomena in different languages is important in teaching Russian as a foreign language, since taking into account the students’ native language makes it easier to teach certain linguistic features when such features are identical in two languages. At the same time, it helps students avoid negative linguistic interference, which is the cause of many typical errors. The relevance of this topic is due to the constant increase in the number of Spanish-speaking students coming to study at preparatory faculties for foreign citizens at Russian universities. The topic Verbal Aspects is one of the most difficult ones to understand for foreigners, including those who speak Spanish. First of all, it is due to the peculiarities of the use and perception of this category in the students’ native language. The purpose of this article is to identify the peculiar features of conveying aspectual meanings, the similarities and differences in the use of the category of verbal aspect in both languages in order to subsequently develop ethno-oriented exercises for Spanish-speaking students, as well as to develop recommendations for providing ethno-oriented materials for a Hispanic audience. The following research methods are used in the article: the method of systemic-functional analysis, the method of complex theoretical analysis of the phenomenon under study, the method of comparative analysis that allows us to observe similarities and differences in the grammatical category of verbal aspect in Russian and in Spanish. In this article, we analyzed three possible ways for conveying Russian verbal aspects in Spanish: lexical, peripheral and morphological. However, if in Russian it may be enough to replace an imperfective verb with a perfective verb in order to change the meaning of a sentence, then in Spanish the structure of the entire sentence often changes. Thus, we cannot talk about the existence of a Spanish grammatical category analogous to the verbal aspect in the Russian language. The analysis will help us take into account the difficulties and cases of negative linguistic interference faced by Spanish-speaking students when studying the Russian verbal aspects, and create ethno-oriented exercises aimed at minimizing the students’ errors.