Course description
For the beginning and intermediate classes, we use "Ultimate Spanish Basic-Intermediate" by Living Language. There is also an optional eight cassette or CD package that accompanies the book. For the advanced classes, we provide handouts at no charge.
Beginning A (chapters 1-6)
Topics - Introductions, asking for information, clock time, work, weather, months, seasons, clothing colors, and sizes.
Grammar and usage - Pronunciation, the verbs "to be", negation, gender, subject pronouns, articles, question words, numbers, present tense of regular verbs, the verb "to go", etc.
Beginning B (chapters 7-12)
Topics - Body and health, family relationships, food, likes and dislikes, eating at restaurants, and making a phone call.
Grammar and usage- The verb "to have", the verb "to do", the present progressive, possessive adjectives, common prepositions, direct and indirect object pronouns, additional present tense irregular verbs, etc.
Beginning C (chapters 13-19)
Topics - Jewelry store, pharmacy, daily activities, traveling by bus, train, renting a car, and at the gas station.
Grammar and usage - Additional present tense irregular verbs, the uses of "to know", reflexive verbs, formal commands, comparatives, the superlative, begin the preterite tense, etc.
Intermediate A (chapters 20-26)
Topics - Renting an apartment, doctor's office, dentist's, buying a computer, movie theater, bargaining, and looking for a job.
Grammar and usage - Additional preterite tense, additional irregular verbs, familiar commands, ordinal numbers, imperfect tense, past progressive, etc.
Intermediate B (chapters 27-33)
Topics - Post office, the beach, the bank, currency exchange, police station, watching TV, and movies.
Grammar and usage - Present and past perfect tense, future tense, conditional tense, uses of "por" and "para", passive, present subjunctive tense, etc.
Intermediate C (chapters 34-40)
Topics - Sports, hotel, media, holidays and festivals, politics, errands, and airport.
Grammar and usage - Additional present subjunctive tense, the imperfect subjunctive tense, the present perfect subjunctive tense, the past perfect subjunctive, certain common expressions, etc.
Advanced Classes
Topics - Discussion of articles, issues, literature, etc.
Grammar and usage - As appropriate related to conversation topics.
Language Description
Spanish, member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, is spoken as a first language by approximately 330 million people. Additionally, there are another 50 million people who speak Spanish as their second language. Not only it is the official language of Spain (40 million speakers) and 19 Latin American countries but also one of the official languages of the United Nations.
