Spanish 1: free lessons and course outline

A first year of a language is mostly a small set of patterns met in a sensible order. Unit 1 teaches the sounds, because Spanish is spelled almost exactly as it is said, and then the numbers, days and months a student needs on the first day. Unit 2 gives the two ideas behind every noun phrase, gender and number, and unit 3 gives the two verbs that mean to be, ser and estar, and the habit of choosing between them by reason rather than by feel. Unit 4 introduces the present tense and the questions, negatives and structures that surround it. Units 5 to 9 spend the year in real territory: school and likes, family and home, daily routines, food and shopping, towns, travel and weather. Unit 10 adds free time, health and the first past tense, the preterite, so a student can say what happened as well as what happens. Unit 11 turns to the Spanish-speaking world and gathers everything into a written paragraph and a short presentation. Every lesson opens with the method, names the specific error that costs the marks, works an example in eight steps, and gives ten practice problems with complete answers. There is no audio, so the course says plainly how every sound is made and asks the student to read every example aloud.