Learning Spanish II: How to Understand and Speak a New Language

by Bill Worden

This course is designed as a continuation of the first Learning Spanish course, which was an introductory course in the language. If you have completed the first course, you are ready for this one. As you take this second course, if some specific grammar point (e.g., stem-changing verbs or double object pronouns) is causing you difficulty, you might want to review that specific topic in the first course. The chart at the bottom of this section tells which topics were taught in which lessons in the first Learning Spanish course.
If you have not taken the first course but do have some background in Spanish, this second course may also be appropriate for you, depending on the level of your Spanish. If you begin this course and realize after several lessons that the information being covered is beyond your current ability level, you might want to get a hold of the first Learning Spanish course to brush up on your Spanish skills before continuing with this course.
Because this is a second course in Spanish, some of the very basics of the language—such as greetings, responses to greetings, and the Spanish alphabet—are not covered. You’ll notice, however, that the early lessons of this course include a fair amount of review (done quickly) on elementary topics such as subject pronouns, agreement of adjectives with nouns, and conjugation of regular verbs in the present. As you progress through this course, you will be introduced to a variety of more advanced grammar topics, ever-increasing vocabulary dealing with a variety of different contexts, and cultural information that will teach you about the places in the world where Spanish is spoken and help you understand how to use the grammar and vocabulary you are learning in their proper cultural context.
Throughout this course, you will be introduced to more than 1,000 of the most commonly used words in Spanish and become acquainted with a number of important cultural aspects of the Spanish-speaking world. The grammar and vocabulary presented in the 30 lessons of this course cover the equivalent of what is taught in a second-semester Spanish course in college. In addition to the grammar and vocabulary information you’ll find in various sections of the course workbook, you might also wish to consult any standard introductory Spanish textbook for reference.
In terms of work with verbs, the course begins with a brief review of the present and preterite tenses and then moves on to teach four other tenses: the imperfect, the present perfect, the future, and the conditional. The course also teaches formal, informal, and nosotros commands and introduces the subjunctive mood (in the present) used in a number of different contexts.
Your ability to express yourself with verbs will be accompanied by a growing competence in using, for example, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs—all the necessary linguistic tools that will allow you to communicate successfully in Spanish. This course offers the requisite linguistic and cultural knowledge that will allow you to continue your journey toward achieving communicative competence in Spanish.
The purpose of this course is not simply to teach you about Spanish, but rather to develop your language skills so that you can communicate successfully in the language. For that reason, the course includes a variety of components designed to allow you to practice and improve your abilities in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding spoken Spanish. You can learn more about these course components in the Introduction to the Course that follows this Scope.

Genres: Spanish Literature

360 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017