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11th and 12th Spanish I

Spanish Assignment for the 4th Quarter

Introduction to Oral Presentation - download the PDF here, or jump to the Introduction at the bottom of this page.

JMJ
Queridos estudiantes,

Espero todos ustedes hayan tenido unas Felices Pascuas. (Now, that was a bit complicated “hayan tenido” – past participle = haber + tenido from tener). También espero que ustedes hayan leído mi correo electrónico anterior. (hayan + leído from leer)

No vamos a tener más clases de español en Zoom. (¡Que mala onda! A mí me gustan las clases de Zoom en español.) Solo vamos a tener una tarea para este cuarto periodo. (solo – only)

A continuación, aquí yo les voy a explicar la tarea:

I feel a little torn continuing the explanation of the only assignment in Spanish because all your grade is based on it and after all you are only beginners. For the sake of clarity and to be fair, I will explain this assignment in English:

You need to send me a video telling me in Spanish about “Your Last Favorite Family Celebration”: i.e. Christmas dinner, your birthday. This video must be at least 7 minutes long. That is a lot of time if you are speaking in Spanish, but you will have plenty of time to prepare and I am going to coach you along.

I think the best way to send me the video will be to Marco-Polo me to my cell phone number. Unless you have other suggestions, I will consider that our choice of presentation. If you do not have my number, please let me know and I will send it to you. As for the due date I will let you know as soon as I have it but know that it will be towards the end of May.

Notice that this assignment requires you to speak in past tense!!!! I know we did not practice it much in class but the mechanics of conjugating the verbs in past Vs. present are the same. I am confident you can do it because you have the tools. All of you have a Spanish-English dictionary and have a Spanish Grammar Book. And if things get very confusing; ask me! :)

And while I will be giving instructions in English, I insist that you try your best in writing to me in Spanish. You may use some English in our communication but only if you feel very confused on how to word it. I may or may not answer back to you in Spanish.

By Tuesday, please send me an email with the choice of “Your Last Favorite Family Celebration”. Do please say hello in Spanish and quickly let me know how you are doing. And for sake of practicing past tense also let me know the last time you went to Mass and with whom.

*The Past Tense of the verbs ser and ir.

The verbs ser (to be) and ir are the most unusual of the irregular verbs in the preterit (past) tense. The good thing (or bad, depending on how you look at it) is that they are identical to each other! That’s right, in the preterit tense, you use the same verb conjugation to mean to be that you use to mean to go. You clarify the intended meaning in the context of the sentence. Here is the preterit conjugation chart for ser and ir:

I hope this helps a little. I will be sending you more directions on your Spanish presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions or should I say: por favor díganme si tienen preguntas o dudas.

Espero que ustedes estén disfrutando estos días en casa con su familia.

Muchos saludos y que Dios los bendiga.

Maestra Buchholz

Introduction to Oral Presentation

JMJ
Queridos estudiantes,

Espero que todos estén bien. Yo no he recibido (hayan + recibir - past participle) respuesta de todos ustedes. Por favor escríbanme sus ideas de lo que ustedes quieren hablar en su última presentación oral.

As I said in Spanish, I have not heard back from everybody regarding the topic you would like to talk about on your last oral presentation. It is interesting to note than in Spanish I used a different verb than in English when communicating this idea: to receive an answer Vs. to hear back. In any case, you can see that it is the same idea.

In this email I would like to address the introduction of your oral presentation.

Introduction for the Oral Presentation

1. Tell me your name in Spanish; yes the long version!
Me llamo Carlos OR Mi nombre es Carlos. Please don’t mix the two forms!
REMEMBER that when you use the first form using the verb llamar – to be called, you don’t need to add the “es” part because you are already using the verb llamar – to be called. Practice!

2. Tell me how old you are. Remember to use the verb “tener” when you tell your age AND to use the word “años” after the number. Otherwise it is not clear that you are giving your age.

3. Tell me the date. For example “hoy es lunes, 5 de mayo del 2020”. To say 2020 en español, you say “dos mil – veinte”. That’s it, simple! And the reason is “del” it is because we are talking about the year 2020 in other words you are saying “de el año 2020”

4. Tell me the name of your school and the school year you are in. I think I have given you the name of the school in Spanish before but here it is just in case:
Academia de Nuestra Señora María Auxiliadora
As for the school year, there is no translation for freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. So just go by the ordinary numbers 11th grade – onceavo año. So you would say: Estoy en el onceavo año en la Academia de Nuestra Señora María Auxiliadora.
The Auxiliadora part might be a little difficult to pronounce so practice before hand.

5. Tell me why you are doing this, “Este es mi reporte final de la clase de español”. And if you really want to be specific then blame it on the COVID19: “… y no hay clases por el Corona Virus”.

6. THEN, thell me the title of your presentation: Hoy les voy a hablar de “La fiesta de Navidad de mi familia del año 2019” or whatever title yo have chosen.

7. Of course, at this point you will tell me who/quien fue a esa fiesta. You don’t have to give me everybody’s name but at least an idea. You could say “mis papas, mis 7 hermanos y yo” or “y mis abuelitos”. In the vocabulary book that I sent there is a small list of relatives on pages 78 and 80.

I leave you at that point. I will be sending you more information soon. Please write all this out and send it to me to review it and make corrections by Tuesday of next week.

Dios los bendiga,
Maestra Buchholz

P.S. In addition, here is a quick summary of past participle & present tense. I notice that I use it quite often on my emails. You don’t’ have to use it, memorize it, or even understand it. But as you might have seen, we use it all the time. It is just as a reference.
Past Participle
For regular -ar, -er, -ir verbs, forming the past participle is easy, as long as you know the following two rules:
• For -ar verbs, drop the -ar ending from the infinitive and add -ado.
• For -er and -ir verbs, drop the -er or -ir endings from the infinitive and add -ido.
Here are some examples:

To form the present perfect, you also need to know how to conjugate the helping verb haber (to have) in the present tense. Notice that haber is an irregular verb:

Even though haber means to have, it doesn’t have the same meaning as tener (to have). When you want to talk about what you possess, use tener. When you need a helping verb to form a perfect or compound tense, use haber.
Examples:

1. Espero todos ustedes hayan tenido unas Felices Pascuas.
I hope all of you have had a Happy Easter

2. También espero que ustedes hayan leído mi correo electrónico anterior.
Also, I hope that all of you have read my previous e-mail.

3. Yo he comido, tú has comido, ella ha comido, nosotros hemos comido, ustedes han comido.
*Notice that the past participle does not change. It is the helping verb haber that changes