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Newsletter Activity 9 – Queridos Reyes Magos…

¡Hola amigos y amigas! In Spain and some other Spanish-speaking countries it’s traditionally los Reyes Magos (Baltasar, Melchor and Gaspar), who bring presents to children. This usually happens on the night of el 5 de enero. In order to practise your Spanish, we thought it would be a good idea for you to write una

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Newsletter Activity 8 – estar a punto de hacer algo

In this newsletter activity we have another useful construction for you: estar a punto de hacer algo. This means “to be about to do something” or “to be on the point of doing something” and so can be used to refer to an imminent action. Note that this structure needs to be followed by an infinitive.

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Newsletter Activity 7 – antes de or antes de que?

In activity 7, we are thinking about when to use antes de and antes de que which both mean “before”. Do you know how they differ? Antes de is always followed by an infinitive and it is used when there is no change of subject in a sentence: antes de llegar, ¡no sabía nada de

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Newsletter Activity 6: the conditional

This blog post is looking at some of the different uses of the conditional. Forming the conditional is quite straightforward as the endings are the same for -AR, -IR and -ER verbs and you add the endings directly onto the infinitive. The endings are as follows: ía          > empezaría      

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Newsletter Activity 5 – Manual de la Felicidad

In this activity we’re going to practise using el imperativo. The imperative is used for giving commands and instructions but in Spanish, it can also be used to give advice. Your challenge is to write a “Happiness Manual”, o en español: “un manual de la felicidad”. For this manual you will need to use the

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Newsletter Activity 4 – Lo que más me gusta hacer es…

In this activity, we’d like you to answer the question ¿qué es lo que más te gusta hacer los fines de semana? Although the question is relatively straightforward, your answer needs to follow the same construction as the question. You form the response in this way: Lo que más me gusta hacer los fines de semana

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Newsletter Activity 3 – Using the verb ‘soler’

¿Conoces el verbo ‘soler’? This is a fantastic word which means “to tend to do something”. It’s followed by the infinitive, so you can use it to mean what you tend to do: suelo ir al cine todos los viernes solemos comer paella durante el verano suelen tomar un café por la mañana Can you work

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Newsletter Activity 2 – Saying how long you’ve been doing something for

Learners of Spanish often find it difficult to say how long they’ve been doing something for because there’s a change of verb tense from English to Spanish. Consider the sentence: “I’ve been speaking Spanish for three months”. In English we use a past tense: “I have been learning”. However in Spanish we use a present tense and

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Newsletter Activity 1 – tener que + infintive

Are you familiar with the expression tener que + infinitive? It means “to have to do something”. You simply use a part of the verb tener, follow it with the word que and then add in a verb in its infinitive form.  Por ejemplo: tengo que practicar mi español tengo que comprar la comida tuve que