
Aaron Roberts introduces the course Introduction to Spanish, sharing his background in telecommunications, international study, and fluency in Spanish to guide learners.
Understand basic Spanish lexical and grammatical aspects and apply spoken and written forms to everyday business situations, including introductions, describing people and departments, telling time, and reading ads.
Learn essential Spanish terms for greetings, numbers, and colors, and practice asking for and providing personal information and company information, including relative positions such as left, right, above, and below.
Learn basic greetings for day-to-day gatherings, including good evening, hello, goodbye, what's up, see you later, and phrases like buenos dias, please, thank you, and sorry.
Provide a brief overview of the Spanish alphabet and guide learners to repeat each letter to familiarize themselves with its sounds.
Learn the spanish color vocabulary by starting with primary colors such as yellow, blue, and red, then explore additional hues like green, black, purple, orange, and violet.
This lecture covers relative positions in Spanish, including front, behind, left, right, and above, with examples. It highlights how similar words can have different meanings and why precise usage matters.
Learn essential Spanish personal information questions and responses, including asking names, where you live, nationality, gender, marital status, and occupation, with attention to formal and informal usage and pronunciation.
Build skills to ask for information about location and seek clarification, while practicing present tense forms for er and ir verbs and reviewing the use of the preposition.
Learn essential Spanish body parts and everyday phrases, from eyes and nose to boca, ears, throat, and stomach, while practicing present tense verb forms and basic expressions of pain.
Master adverbs and question words, learn verb conjugation with pronouns, and practice days, months, and numbers to express dates and times in Spanish.
Explore Spanish demonstratives, including masculine and feminine forms and singular versus plural usage, and learn how prepositions indicate location, time, manner, and material.
Explore how Spanish verbs express meaning through context, covering ser versus estar for descriptions and feelings, present-tense conjugations, and key irregulars, including tener for 'to have'.
read and discuss ads and promotion blurbs, greet people and exchange pleasantries, introduce individuals, ask about and identify someone, describe physical attributes, and learn plural forms of nouns and adjectives.
Recaps first-person verbs, numbers, and location questions; then explores reading company ads, introductions, describing people, plural possessives, and ser and estar, with key business terms like boss, director, contract.
Explore Spanish terms for commerce and tourism, including marketing, stock exchange, importer and exporter, demand and supply, hospitality, and travel industry vocabulary.
Learn how Spanish nouns form plurals by adding s after vowels, es after consonants, and handle common exceptions, including endings like z and consonant clusters.
Explore possessive adjectives and how they show ownership across singular and plural forms, using examples like mine, yours, his, hers, and phrases such as my car and your purse.
Explore the Spanish verbs ser and estar, differentiating permanent characteristics from temporary states, with examples on locations, emotions, occupations, and relationships.
Explore the present tense of the Spanish verb ser, including its irregular conjugation and key forms such as yo soy and other present-tense forms.
Identify and describe company positions and the functions of various departments, and duplicate department roles, while studying the Spanish business code and definite articles in unit 4.
Explore common office supplies, from printing paper and carbon paper to envelopes, greeting cards, business cards, letterheads, notebooks, spiral bound notebooks, stamps, filing cabinets, and cardboard boxes.
Explore common office supplies and writing implements, from staplers, scissors, and tape to pencils, pens, erasers, protractors, and t square, then organize desks, filing cabinets, bookcases, shelves, and recycle bins.
Explore how a job function maps to responsibilities and titles, from administrative roles to chief executive and chief financial officer positions, and when extra explanations describe duties.
Explore leadership titles across organizations, from team leaders to executives. Identify roles such as director, president, ceo, founder, manager, administrator, and coordinator within company personnel.
Explore common company positions and job titles, from board of directors to customer service, human resources, and call center roles, with practical Spanish vocabulary for workplace contexts.
Identify and describe company positions, departments, and job functions, and practice asking key questions about job title, profession, department, boss, and roles in marketing, customer service, and finance.
Explore how to use business cards to present professional data, including telecom roles and translations between English and Spanish, such as engineers, consultants, and interpreters.
Explore Spanish intensifiers before adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, including very much and extremely. Learn how the suffix -ísimo attaches to adjectives to intensify meaning, with vowel and consonant rules.
Learn to act and ask for directions and discuss the price of a commodity or service, practice prepositions offline, and use the impersonal form of the verb bear.
Learn how everyday business routines help things run smoothly, with examples like checking your calendar, diet and exercise, prioritizing goals, and ensuring a good night's sleep.
Explore the difference between habit and routine, showing how habits become automatic responses and routines are daily action sequences, with examples from coffee orders, commuting, and travel.
Learn to tell time in spanish using cardinal numbers and the verb ser, with formulas for on-the-hour, minutes past, and minutes to the next hour.
Learn time expressions and how to tell the time with common phrases like 'it's 2:00 in the morning', 'it's on the dot', and 'twenty minutes to ten', plus clock-reading practice.
Explore the impersonal there construction in Spanish, including hay/haber for existence, its distinction from location, and phrases like hay que followed by an infinitive to express necessity.
Explore how to describe location in Spanish using prepositions with articles. See practical examples like the book is inside the box and the toy is under the chair.
Explore vocabulary for office furniture and equipment, identify rooms and offices, and read promotional materials about buildings, investments, and rental or sale ads.
Explore how to describe a house in Spanish using adjectives and room vocabulary, including the kitchen, living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms, with basic sentence structures.
Explore a Spanish listening exercise describing a house for sale, including twelve rooms on the first and second floors, a garage, basement, garden, and a well maintained, safe home.
Engage with a house-for-sale dialogue between Mark and Roy to practice understanding spoken Spanish and identifying key words from the conversation.
Explore how investments shape finance through time and long-term plans, including foreign direct investments, joint enterprises, and partners like Enron and Microsoft in regions such as Bolivia and Mercosur.
Learn Spanish through common buildings and places, from airports and banks to police stations and post offices, and practice asking for directions and prices in everyday scenarios.
Introduce the bibliography for the introduction to Spanish course, guiding students to identify key sources for studying Spanish.
RATIONALE
Learning a foreign language such as Spanish opens up a whole new world to people who would otherwise not have been able to participate in the reality of the native speakers of that language. This knowledge provides insight into alternative paradigms and other ways of looking at the world. It is essential therefore, that students of the various programmes offered by this institution be provided with the resources to interact and foster relationships with Spanish-speaking citizens of the world. This Introduction to Spanish course is designed to help learners understand this medium of communication and so develop the ability to express themselves orally and in writing as well as acquire an understanding of the culture of this important international language.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will introduce students to the basic functions and structures of the Spanish language. Students will learn to communicate in everyday situations – at the workplace, in the business environment, in formal settings, at home, in an educational setting and during periods of leisure. Students will develop the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing with emphasis placed on the oral communication skills. These learners will also be exposed to important aspects of the culture of the Spanish-speaking world.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES
At the end of this course students should be able to:
Communicate effectively using basic lexical items and grammatical structures of the Spanish language.
Listen and respond orally and in writing, to questions and comments as well as initiate and participate, with confidence, in conversation on everyday topics and general matters.
Read, analyse and respond appropriately and competently to written forms of the language.
Respond in writing to information given in simple Spanish prose and in response to other types of material presented in the target language, express opinions and discuss topics of interest through writing at the beginners’ level.
Provide information and otherwise display an awareness of other cultures, show empathy and demonstrate an appreciation of other people.
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES
On successful completion of this course, participants should be able to:
1. Express themselves at the beginners’ level using a range of grammatical structures and appropriate vocabulary to provide information and treat relevant areas of personal, professional, informal and formal interactions.
2. Respond appropriately after having listened to information given in the target language.
3. Comment and converse on a range of topics using vocabulary and linguistic features relevant to the beginners’ exposure to the foreign language.
4. Read with a view to responding appropriately to texts prepared using the linguistic structures, vocabulary and topics with which the students are familiar.
5. Write short notes, respond in writing via messages, e-mail, composition and other written forms of the target language on matters relating to students’ daily activities and other issues of interest.
6. Express orally and/or in writing an appreciation of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world.