Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

Today we're writing a complete letter together: a letter from your sister about the day she arrived late for a very important exam. And we're going to use it to get comfortable with the two past tenses in Spanish, the preterite and the imperfect.

In English, "I looked at the clock" could be one quick look or something you kept doing. In Spanish you have to choose: miré or miraba. In a story about the past, you make that choice again and again, and the choice changes what the sentence means.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• Differentiate between the imperfect and preterite;

• form the imperfect of any regular verb, plus ser, ir and ver, the only three verbs that break the pattern;

• set the scene of a story in the imperfect: the weather, the time, what people were doing;

• move the story forward in the preterite, one event after another;

• say that something happened while something else was going on, in one sentence;

• say how you were feeling at the time and how you reacted at one moment, each in the tense it needs;

• write a complete letter of 130 to 150 words that tells a story in the past and ends with what happens next.

In the full lesson you'll hear me read the whole letter, then we look at what every verb in it is doing. You'll practise both tenses on a new story and write a new letter of your own, with my answers at the end.

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Grab a pen. ¡Vamos! ✍🏽

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

In this part of your oral you get a short situation in English with two questions under it, (a) and (b). You answer both in Spanish. The two lines don't always belong to you. Sometimes you speak as yourself, and sometimes you speak as your mother, a friend or the person supervising the exam.

Today we work out who is speaking in each part, and why, before you say a word.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• tell from the question who speaks in part (a) and who speaks in part (b);

• speak as your mother, a friend or a shop assistant when the question asks for their words;

• choose tú, usted or ustedes for the person being spoken to;

• ask a real question when the situation needs one;

• keep each line short, with everything the question asks for and nothing extra;

• answer five new situations about shopping, travel, home and school out loud, without notes.

In the full lesson you'll hear me answer six real situations from a past oral. Then you answer two with me, and five new ones on your own.

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Find somewhere you can speak out loud. Here's the first situation. 🎧

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

In the oral, you hear a question and you have to answer it on the spot, with nothing written in front of you. You may understand the question and still only get out two or three words. Or you answer about today when the question wants a holiday you already had.

So today we practise answering real oral questions out loud, one at a time. By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• hear a question once and know what it wants: a time, a feeling, a place, a reason or a description;

• answer in the right time: what you usually do, what you would like to do, or what already happened;

• give a full answer to a question that starts with Describe, with more than one sentence;

• say me gustaría when the question says te gustaría, and prefiero with no me in front;

• keep going when I ask you a second question about your answer.

You'll hear me ask every question. You answer in the pause, then you hear one full answer to check yourself against.

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Get ready to listen. Here's the first question. 🎧

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

For this exercise, your friend's lines are already written. Your job is to fill in the missing lines and keep the conversation going. The challenge? Every line you write must make sense with what comes before it and what comes after it, so the whole conversation makes sense. You're not just answering questions. Sometimes, you'll need to ask the right question yourself!

Today, we’ll work through a dialogue about going to a concert, one missing line at a time.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• write a response that answers what your friend has just asked.

• recognise when your friend's next line is an answer, and work out what question you need to ask.

• include all five points required by the exam, even when they don't appear in the same order.

• express when something starts and how long it lasts using correct Spanish.

• keep your part of the dialogue within the 80–100-word limit.

In the full lesson, you'll read and listen to my completed dialogue, practise writing your own responses, and then put your skills to the test with a new conversation about going to a football match with a friend.

Remember: My dialogue is a model to help you understand how to approach this exercise, not something to memorise or copy. Pay attention to how we use the clues in the conversation to work out what belongs in each missing line. Then use what you've learned to write your own responses.

If you are reading the free preview, subscribe to Arc to unlock the complete lesson. If you are already one of my students, keep going.

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Grab a pen. ¡Vamos! 😙 Here's the dialogue. ✍🏽

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

A letter can be in good Spanish and still miss something the question asks for. Some lines in the question ask for two things at once, like how you found out that you won and how you reacted. If you write about one and forget the other, your letter doesn’t fully answer the question.

So, today we’re going to work on how to spot exactly what the question is asking you to do — and make sure your letter covers all of it.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• break down the question so you know exactly what to include;

• write the date, the greeting and the ending of a letter in Spanish;

• talk about something that happened in the past and something you plan to do in the future;

• describe a shopping trip clearly, with enough detail to bring it to life;

• put everything together in a complete 130–150-word letter of your own.

In the full lesson you'll hear me read my completed letter. Then we check it against the question, and you write your own.

If you are reading the free preview, subscribe to Arc to unlock the complete lesson. If you are already one of my students, keep going.

Grab a pen. Here's the letter assignment. ✍🏽

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

A directed situation is only a few lines of English, but it asks for more than it seems to. You have to work out who is writing, who is reading and every detail the answer must give. Then all of that has to fit into one short Spanish sentence.

Today we answer ten real situations together, one question at a time. By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• tell who is writing the message, even when it is your mother, a coach or a stranger

• choose tú, usted or ustedes for the person or the people reading it

• find every detail a situation asks for, so your answer doesn't stop halfway

• join two details in one sentence with y, pero or porque, and see when a short phrase is enough

• answer five new situations on your own and check them.

In the full lesson you'll hear me read every answer. Then you write your own answers to five new situations and check them against mine.

If you are reading the free preview, subscribe to Arc to unlock the complete lesson. If you are already one of my students, keep going.

Grab a pen. Here are the situations. ✍🏽

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Hola mis amigos 👋🏽

This lesson is not another verb conjugation table. It is a way to find the right ending for any regular Spanish verb, and with a little practice you will have a much easier time working through CSEC and even CAPE material.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• pick the right ending for any regular Spanish verb in the present or preterite, without picturing a table;

• say what you do and what you did for the five grammatical persons (I, you, he or she, we and they), and know which one you are saying;

• put the written accents in the right place in the preterite instead of guessing;

• rebuild all the endings from memory, with no notes, before a test or in the middle of a sentence.

The goal is to help you stop memorising verb conjugation the old way. I’ll show you how to use short memory sentences to rebuild the regular present and preterite endings.

For every verb, you need three things: the person, the tense and the correct ending. We are going to practise each choice separately and then put them together.

We are focusing on regular verbs in the present and preterite. Irregular verbs such as ser, ir and tener have their own forms, so we will study the irregular forms in another lesson.

Inside the full lesson, you will get three audio drills with me, five teaching cards and 34 practice items with the answers. One of the memory sentences includes a mosquito named Ron. Ron will make sense when we reach the preterite. 🙂

If you are reading the free preview, subscribe to Arc to unlock the complete lesson. If you are already one of my students, keep going.

Ready? Hold up one hand. The actual lesson starts below. ✋🏽

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