Unidad 3: Mis planes
4. Aprendamos a hablar, escribir y escuchar temas de la escuela
You are studying Spanish because you want to be a responsible citizen with skills and values important to the pursuit of an enriched life and success in the world. You want to have a competitive advantage using Spanish to succeed in a global world, and be able to work with a diverse workforce, that can understand people of other cultures. To be successful in any language or career, you need to have good listening skills along with the ability to express yourself via spoken and written communication so that you can understand others and they can understand you.
We have studied how to pronounce words and we understand some of the meanings. Now we will start using the words to communicate! Let’s start with days of the week. When you want to talk about your class schedule, you can say that you have certain classes on certain days of the week. You will also be able to talk about what you do on different days during the week, as well as on the weekend. Remember in Spanish the first day of the week is Monday and the days of the week don’t begin with a capital letter. To proceed there are some grammar elements that we studied in Unit 2 that need to be fresh in our mind to progress with our Spanish communication about classes and times.
El verbo SER: as you remember SER is to be, SER is the name of the verb (infinitive). We studied each form of the verb SER with each one of the personal pronouns. Complete the next table.
To be – Ser
| Personal pronouns | Verb: To be | Pronombres personales | Verbo ser | Put these words together in Spanish | If you put these words together in Spanish they mean in English |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | am | yo* | soy* | yo soy | I am |
| you (informal-singular) | are | tú | eres | ||
| he, she, you (formal, singular) |
is is are |
él ella Ud.* |
es | ||
| we | are | nosotros (as) | somos | ||
| all of you (informal, plural) | are | vosotros (as) | sois | ||
| they they all of you (formal, plural) |
are | ellos ellas Uds.* |
son |
*Note: Personal pronouns in Spanish are only capitalized when a sentence starts. With “usted and ustedes”, note these are capitalized when we use the abbreviation “Ud. or Uds.”
What is the subject pronoun that we have in English, but not in Spanish?___________
Spanish doesn’t have the subject pronoun “it.” Sometimes we will use the personal pronouns él or ella, when we are talking about things or animals. Often the pronoun is not used simply because the “it” is understood. For example:
It is my dog. → Él es mi perro. → Es mi perro.
It is my book. → Él es mi libro. → Es mi libro.
They are my books. → Ellos son mis libros. → Son mis libros.
Since Spanish is very detail oriented and all words have gender and number, you need to ensure that articles, nouns and adjectives agree in number (singular, plural) and gender (feminine, masculine.) With this in mind, write the Spanish subject pronoun (él or ella) for the following nouns:
El día________________________
La semana _____________________
El mes________________________
La estación_____________________
El año_________________________
