A2 level Spanish course (based on DELE qualifications)

Learning Spanish is a very useful tool, the knowledge that Spanish and Hispanic culture will offer you is invaluable. You will be able to find great job opportunities and widen your career's possibilities; travel the world and talk to many different people; learn something beautiful and be a part of this world's diversity. In this class, you will begin to learn Spanish with many useful tools so it doesn't become overwhelming. This a very complete and competitive course where you will learn how to say simple sentences, verb tenses (present, past, and future), adjectives, adverbs, questions (why, what, where, how), and other useful tools like asking for prices and directions. You will also learn many interesting facts that will help you learn better and faster, like why does Spanish sound the way it does, where does it come from and what are the secrets behind its words.

There are a lot of reasons to learn a new language: being able to communicate better with people from different cultures; new job options; acquiring new knowledge; being able to read and watch movies in another language, and so on. Culture and tradition are what makes us rich. Being able to learn from a new one is a beautiful thing. Spanish is spoken in 21 different countries, imagine the possibilities that come with this language. There's so much literature, history, traditions, music, comedy, words, and words to learn. In this class, I am going to focus on teaching you this side of Spanish, the one that makes it fun, beautiful, and diverse. I will teach you about our tradition in Arts, literature, filmography, and music. Also about how politics have worked through our history, and how history has shaped us as people. I will talk about how diverse our dialects and words can be, teaching you our idioms, expressions, and all of the things you cannot learn in a simplified workbook. Why do we talk the way we talk? Why does it sound different when you say it and how can you improve that? Why do we have so many verb tenses? How do letters such as H, LL, and Ñ work, and where do they come from? This is not the class where you will learn Spanish the usual way, rather a space to learn to love its roots and take it to a higher level of practice. This is where you can bring all of your curiosities and find new ones. This is where you will find new conversation topics, and you will practice your Spanish in a more realistic way without being afraid of any judgment. The class also shapes itself to your own interests and needs. I will focus on the skills and information you desire to acquire.

Content of the A1 Spanish full course based on the official curriculum of Cervantes. For this class, you do not need any knowledge of Spanish. From the very start, we will start to speak as much Spanish as possible. You can use English to express yourself at first, and through the course, you will learn how to express needs, use and understand common expressions, and simple sentences used to satisfy your everyday needs. This a 60 hours, 1 hour per class. It includes all the knowledge you will need to pass a DELE test. *Disclaimer: you do not have to purchase all 60 hours, but for all A1 level to be considered complete, you must master all of its content. However, if you consider that you already have some of this knowledge, the course can adapt to what you need to learn only. What you will learn to say in Spanish: • Identify, describe, and compare: people, places, objects. • Express why you want to learn Spanish. • Talk about your day-to-day activities and things you are doing in the present. • Opinions: express and ask opinions about someone or something; express agreement or disagreement; confirm and deny what others say. • Knowledge: be able to say if you know or do not know about something. • Feelings, desires, preferences: express and ask about likes, desires, preferences, need, and wishes. • Petitions: ask for something in a public establishment (be able to buy things from a store); ask for the price of products. • Socialize greetings and goodbyes; introductions, meeting someone for the first time, introducing someone else; say thanks and congratulations. • Oral communication: be able to say that you do not understand something; ask someone to repeat what they said; check if you understood something well; spell out and ask for a word to be spelled out; ask for something to be written down; ask the meaning of a word or expression; ask someone to talk slower, faster or louder. • What you will learn about Spanish grammar (detailed): 1. The alphabet. 2. Pronunciation: intonation (how Spanish sounds when we enunciate, negate and interrogate); accentuation and rhythm, syllables; how to use upper case and lower case; recognize the main punctuation signs. 3. Nouns: Gender: identify and differentiate feminine and masculine nouns (referred to people). Number: form plurals. 4. Articles: general uses or definite and indefinite articles. When to say and not to say an article. 5. Adjectives: qualifying adjectives (some, most, all, none, occasionally, sometimes, now and again, usually, always, never, I guess, I think, I know, etc); demonym; gender and number; comparatives (the best, the worst, etc). 6. Personal pronouns: stressed and unstressed forms; how to use them next to nouns and direct objects; learn to recognize the direct object. 7. Demonstrative pronouns: how to identify and point at objects. 8. Possessives: stressed and unstressed forms; general uses; when do we use article and possessives. 9. Quantitative: how much is there of something. 10. Interrogatives: how to ask common questions (qué, cuál, quién, etc). 11. Numerals: ordinals and cardinals; weight and common measurements. 12. How to use the word “que” (a common relative). 13. Verbs: uses of the verb to be (Ser y Estar); verbs to like and to appear; common reflexive verbs; introduction to verbal periphrasis (tener que, ir a, querer, poder, necesitar). Impersonal use of the verb Haber. 14. Verb tenses: simple present tense of common regular and irregular verbs; using the present tense as an imperative. 15. Adverbs: quantity, affirmation, negation, mode, time, and place. 16. Prepositions: a, de, para, en, con, etc. 17. Time references: Indicators of the present. Hours, days of the week, months, dates, seasons of the year. 18. Spatial references. 19. The order of a sentence: nouns and verbs. 20. Sentence structures: declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, comparative sentences, casual sentences. 21. Most common abbreviations.

To read is to think. When you learn how to read in a foreign language, you are also learning how to think in a said language without the need to translate every word. This means that reading helps you become more fluent and less literal. Besides that, there is so much literature to be found in the Spanish language! there are 21 countries full of diversity, culture, and tradition. There is a lot to find, learn and enjoy in Hispanic and Latin American literature. I graduated from Letters -or Literature- in the Universidad Central de Venezuela, so this is my specialty, and I have so many beautiful and fun books to share with you! This class works as some sort of reading and conversational club: -I will send you a variety of books -that suit your taste- for you to read at home, then I will guide you through the reading I made as a native speaker and an avid reader. -We will share points of view, practicing oral Spanish as well. -I will help you improve your vocabulary by focusing on the words we read. -You will learn new idioms and expressions, as well as dialectal and social differences between our people. -You get to solve any of the doubts you've had while reading in Spanish. -We will have a lot of fun with many amazing authors that are very important to our culture.