Spanish 1A

This is the first semester of a two-semester course sequence. In this course, students will gain the skills to talk about themselves and the world around them. Students will learn to introduce themselves, as well as describe their family and friends, what they like to do for fun, and their daily routines at home and school. Throughout the course, students will meet three fictional characters and some of their Spanish-speaking friends who will share their experiences in school, at home, and in other parts of their daily lives. The class takes a proficiency-based approach, informed by current language acquisition research and the ACTFL performance descriptors for novice language learners. A heavy focus is placed on meaningful language use, and grammar is taught implicitly through input and meaning-based activities. Grammar concepts taught include present tense conjugations (with some stem-changers), gustar (and similar verbs), possessive adjectives, adjective agreement, estar + prepositions, present progressive tense, and ir + a + infinitive.