Let's Speak Spanish

In our first lesson, we'll review Spanish pronunciation to take you closer to the target sounds you'll need to make when speaking Spanish. We'll review Strategy 1: Sentence Starters and Strategy 2: The Verb Hay, and you'll pick up an additional speaking template associated with Strategy 2. At the end of this lesson, your pronunciation will be better, and you'll know how to apply Strategies 1 and 2 to a variety of Spanish-speaking situations.

Living in the Past

We'll spend quite a bit of time in this course talking about the past tense, and that topic starts in this lesson. Once you finish this lesson, you'll know when to apply our first five strategies - Sentence Starters, Hay, ¿Donde Está?, Tengo/Tiene, and Quiero/Quiere - to present and past tense Spanish-speaking situations.

Get Into the Present

Today, you'll learn the past tense of Strategy 6: Me/Le Gusta and all about Strategy 7: Present Tense Verbs. You'll learn to pick up the pace by using exercises to help build up your speed in moving from one Strategy to another. When you've completed this lesson, you'll know lots of vocabulary words, a lot more verbs, more fun phrases, and perhaps most important of all, you'll know how to use Strategies 1 through 7 in any Spanish-speaking situation.

Putting It All Together

In this lesson, you'll learn to link your Strategies so that you're able to move from one Strategy to another without hesitation. Once you're able to do this, you're on your way to becoming more fluent in Spanish. Even so, there will be times when you'll have a memory lapse or a verbal breakdown. Not to worry—today you'll also learn how to use breakdown phrases in Spanish, making it appear that you think in Spanish!

You Talking to Me?

You'll be able to reach out and embrace other people in your Spanish conversations after you finish this lesson. By practicing Strategy 7: Present Tense Verbs, you'll learn a range of ways to incorporate other people into your Spanish.

Being Informal

Today, you'll continue to practice incorporating other people into your Spanish conversations. But in this lesson, you'll also learn to carry on a conversation with some depth because you'll be able to reduce your sentences to short, crisp bursts.

I've Seen the Future

Today, we're going to use Strategies 1 and 7 to talk about the future. Besides having fun with Strategies 1 and 7 and the future tense, you'll learn all about Strategy 8, which teaches you to create sentences in Spanish using would.. When this lesson is complete, you'll be able to get into the past, the present, the future, and the conditional.

Learning to Compare

While the focus of this course is to help you learn strategies for constructing Spanish sentences, you'll learn a considerable amount of vocabulary along the way. In this lesson, you'll take a pause from the strategies to learn to string adjectives together. When you've completed this lesson, you'll be able to speak like a poet—if you want to!

Reviewing Our Strategies

Today, you'll learn why so-called irregular verbs are not as irregular as you may have thought. There's a pattern to their irregularity. By applying Strategy 7: Present Tense Verbs to these irregular Spanish verbs, you'll learn to use them in no time at all. You'll also practice most of the strategies you've learned so far to become even more efficient when conversing with Spanish speakers.

Let's Add Some Movement

In this lesson, you'll learn all about Strategy 9, which teaches you how to add -ing to a verb in Spanish. This strategy will help you become a highly capable storyteller, making past and present events more interesting to your listeners. When you finish this lesson, you'll have what it takes to say what you want to say with style and color.

Being Possessive

Today, you'll learn all the different ways to produce possessive expressions. You might know how to translate My house is your house, but do you know how to translate phrases like: This is mine, not yours. Whose is this? Is this hers? Oh, it's theirs, not ours. This lesson will show you how. You'll also get some time to practice the strategies and you'll even pick up more vocabulary and fun phrases.

More Verbs

Throughout all our lessons, we'll follow the story of Daniel's experiences with David Smith, Señor Macias, and Platero. In today's lesson, the adventure comes to a surprising climax, but not before you learn all about Strategy 10, which is a way to express past tense. Armed with Strategies 1 through 10, you'll be ready to go out and find some Spanish speakers to talk to!