Spanish Fundamentals

Course Overview

During this course, the students will learn beginning grammatical Spanish structures and vocabulary, integrating the learned lessons though meaningful activities. The students will be exposed to aural stimuli, as well as, written and collaborative exercises. They will work with their classmates to exchange ideas and compare information. The instructor will implement TPR (total physical response) techniques to teach this course and to communicate. The students will also learn about cultures and geography, expanding their knowledge and awareness about all of the diversity in Latin America and Spain by reading different texts in English and Spanish. The objective of this course is that students can begin to communicate and understand the importance of learning Spanish and its application in real life, such as to be able to communicate with other people when traveling, studying or working. At the end of this course the students will be able to talk about their daily routine, past events, likes and dislikes and increase their vocabulary.

Course Content

Preliminary lesson

The objective of this lesson is to introduce the students to Spanish greetings and its importance in Spanish speaking countries, the verb ser and estar, vocabulary to talk about courses, majors, classrooms and people in the classroom, articles, the alphabet and vowels, gender, and number of nouns.

Episode 1 – Lesson A

The objective of this lesson is to teach the students the numbers 0-30, about regular verbs ending in –ar, to talk about daily schedules, the days of the week, how to express the need or desire to do something, how to talk about time, and possessive adjectives. They will also learn some general information about the Spanish-speaking world by reading.

Episode 1 – Lesson B

In this lesson the students will learn more interrogative words to ask questions, use the regular verbs ending in –er and –ir to talk about activities, vocabulary to talk about the months, seasons, and the weather, to express immediate and planned future events with ir, to describe people using adjectives and adjective agreement. They will also learn about Chile.

Episode 2 – Lesson A

In this lesson the students will learn about the numbers 31-100, how to express age, verbs that end in -go (yo forms in the present tense), prepositions of location to express where things and places are, more on expressing location and actions using the verb estar, names of places in a university and city, activities using stem-changing verbs, and cultural information about Mexico.

Episode 2 – Lesson B

In this lesson the students will learn clothing vocabulary and the colors to describe them, more about stem-changing verbs in the present tense to talk about what people do, the numbers 100-1,000, describe places and things using demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, talk about shopping and making purchases, use the verbs ser and estar to talk about conditions and traits. They will learn some cultural aspects about Spain.

Episode 3 – Lesson A

In this lesson the students will learn vocabulary to talk about members of their immediate and extended family, talk about knowing people, places, and factual information using the verbs saber and conocer, how to use direct object pronouns to eliminate redundancy, vocabulary to describe how people look, to make comparisons in order to describe people and things. The students will also learn about Colombia.

Episode 3 – Lesson B

In this lesson, the students will learn about vocabulary to talk about what they eat for breakfast, how to express negation, a summary of the uses of ser and estar, and how to use them to describe food and direct object pronouns. The students will also learn about Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Episode 4 – Lesson A

In this lesson, the students will learn how to talk about pastimes and leisure activities, special occasions and holidays, activities in the past using the preterite tense, and vocabulary related to sports and fitness activities. The students will learn about Latinos and the Spanish language in the United States.

Episode 4 – Lesson B

In this lesson the students will learn vocabulary to talk about dwellings, buildings, rooms, furniture and other items found in the house, activities in the past with stem-changing –ir verbs in the preterite, the basic uses of reflexive verbs, to talk about typical household chores, and some preliminary distinctions between por and para. The students will also learn about Guatemala.