Spa 1101
Guide for the Midterm

1.    Accents and Punctuation: Do you remember how to divide a word into its basic syllables? Where does the natural accent fall in Spanish?  Why are the "sticky" vowels so important?  (Review)

2.    Introduction and Simple Conversation: Can you write a simple dialogue between two people in both a formal and informal situations? How many questions and answers can you include? What types of questions have you learned? Can you introduce your friend to someone else (“te/le present a”)?

3.    Survival Phrases: How many basic survival expressions like “¿Cómo se dice ‘slowly’ en español?” have we learned?  How many classroom commands do we know?

4.    Numbers:

a.    Can you count and spell the numbers between 0 and 1000+? Do you know how to apply the rules for adjective agreement to numbers when they used as adjectives?  For example, how would you write “two hundred one pages” correctly in Spanish?

b.    How would you tell someone your phone number in Spanish?  When listing your name in a phonebook in a Spanish speaking country would you include both of your parents (paternal and maternal) last names?  Which of your parents’ last names comes first?  Which last names does a child inherit in the Spanish speaking world? 

5.    Days, Seasons, and Months: Can you name and spell each day of the week, each month of the year, and all the four seasons? Do the seasons in relation to months change in South America? How so?  Could you determine which season it is in, for instance, Chile during the month of May?  Are any of the days, months, or seasons capitalized in Spanish?

6.    Agreement: Why is noun-adjective and article-noun agreement so important in Spanish? What rules will help us determine the correct use of an article or an adjective? Are certain nouns always feminine or masculine? What is the difference between a definite and indefinite adjective? How many adjectives have we studied so far (p. 19, p. 41)? Are colors and nationalities used as adjectives too? What is the difference between saying “Ella es de México” and “Ella es mexicana."?

7.    Time: How do we tell time in Spanish? How do you express “AM” and “PM”? What type of time expression is typically used in an airport? What British customs for expressing time are similar to those in Spanish? How do you say “midday”, “midnight”, “half past”, “quarter till”, and “rush hour” in Spanish? What is the difference between “a las seis” and “son las seis”?

8.    Question words: How many questions words have we learned (p. 50)? What is the question word for "do" in Spanish? Can you create a question with each question word?   When do you use "qué" versus "cuál"?

9.    Possession: What are two ways of stating “his books” in Spanish? Do you recall that, unlike the “de” construction, all possessive adjectives must agree in number and some in gender? Which possessive adjectives agree in gender? What does “su” mean in English?

10. Prepositions of Place:  How many prepositions did we learn in the Rogelio Ratón PowerPoint presentation?  Are there any prepositions of place that were not included in this presentation but that appear in the textbook?

11. Verbs:

a.    Do you know all of the subject pronouns in Spanish?

b.    Can you write simple “do” questions in Spanish? Are you able to answer a question in the following ways: yes, no-reaffirm-no, no-correction? Can you identify the subject in a question? 

c.    How many AR, ER, IR verbs have we learned? Have you honed your skills in verb recognition, usage, and conjugation?

d.    Can you conjugate the verb SER and ESTAR? Do you know when to use the verb “hay” instead of “ser”?  Do you know the rules for using SER as opposed to ESTAR in sentences?

e.    What do you know about compound verbs?  How many special compound verb structures have we learned?  For instance, “ir+a”, “tener +que”, etc.

f.     Can you conjugate the vebs IR and HACER and used them in a sentence?

g.    How do we conjugate “tener”? How do we use this verb as part of a compound verb structure?  For instance, expressions like “tener que” or “tener ganas de”.  How many idiomatic expressions can we create using the verb “tener”?

h.    Why do we refer to the “gustar” verb as a “backwards verb”? What does “gustar” literally mean? What conjugations of this verb do we usually avoid? What indirect object pronouns do we use with this verb? For instance, how would you restate “a mí”, “a ti”, “a ella”, “a Ud.”, “a Uds.”, or “a nosotros”?

12. Vocabulary:

a.    Have you studied all the greetings, farewells, and titles?  How about the list of common survival sentences?  What survival commands were included in the acrostic “Las Vegas”?

b.    How many colors have we learned? 

c.    Can you identify the objects in the classroom that we studied using the LOCI method?   

d.    How many types of nationality suffixes are there?  Can you identify each of the Latin American nationalities?

e.    Have you studied the list of academic subjects  (70)? 

f.     Can you name all of the buildings on campus?