Topic One (1.1): El español global
Objectives for this topic
- Getting to know the Spanish speaking countries of the world
- Understanding word order
Introduction
In this topic, you will get to know countries of the world where people speak Spanish. You will also learn about the word order of nouns and adjectives.
Working through your course book
Please work through the following sections in your coursebook, completing all listed exercises:
- Page 8 Exercise 1 - Listen to Audio Track 2 and learn how to pronounce these countries and cities:
LISTEN - Audio Track 2 Download LISTEN - Audio Track 2
- Complete Exercise 2 by matching up the English with the Spanish. Learn the spelling of these places in Spanish - you can see how similar they are to English!
- Then complete Exercise 3 by listening to Audio Track 3 and to the information about celebrities who speak Spanish. Complete the table with the correct information in English.
LISTEN - Audio Track 3 Download LISTEN - Audio Track 3
- Page 9 Exercise 4 - You are going to talk about some famous people. Practise reading the conversation in Exercise 4 with a partner.
- Then complete Exercise 5. Use the original conversation and change the underlined sections to talk about the other famous people! Remember that in Spanish, question marks are used at the beginning, as well as at the end, of a question. However, at the beginning of a question the question mark has to be upside-down (¿). The same for exclamation marks: you must use an upside-down exclamation mark at the beginning of the sentence and an upright one at the end.
- Page 9 Exercise 6: Read the sentences and translate them into English.
- Practise your pronunciation from this topic out loud. You could use the pronunciation videos in the Resources section to support your learning!
- Read the Estrategia box on page 9 to learn how to make Spanish and Latin American culture part of your life! Try to speak some Spanish every day! You could also follow some famous people or organisations online, for example @Spain on Twitter.
Review
- Write down at least 10 names of Spanish-speaking countries - can you spell them correctly?
- As an extra challenge, can you spell five of their capital cities correctly?
Interactive Kerboodle activities
Log onto Kerboodle and complete the interactive activities for this topic:
COMPLETE - Reading activity: El español global Links to an external site.
Support activity for this topic
Watch the following video to consolidate the work in this lesson. Remember to repeat to practise your pronunciation:
WATCH - Spanish speaking countries and their capitals (YouTube) Links to an external site.
Extension activity for this topic
Learn the names of five Spanish-speaking countries not mentioned in this unit. For example: Venezuela, Uruguay, México, Bolivia and Panamá. Following the pattern of the sentences in Exercise 1, can you write five new sentences about these countries and their capitals?
You could also print out a map of the Spanish-speaking world and label each country in Spanish.
Cultural Understanding
Watch this fun and interesting video about the 20 Spanish-speaking countries of the world. Once you have watched the video, can you try and remember 5 interesting facts that were new to you?
Check your answers
If you would like to check your answers for this topic, you can do so by consulting the Claro 1 module answers for Topic 1.1:
CHECK - Topic 1.1 Download CHECK - Topic 1.1
Grammar Alert
Read the Gramática box on page 9 about word order. In Spanish, as in many other European languages, adjectives generally come after the noun. Example: la chica española.
Vocabulary
Review the vocabulary section El español global (Global Spanish) on page 28.