Spanish A2: Basics

Time arrives at this level. You can report what happened and announce what you mean to do. Sentences get longer because they join up: the first linking words — and, but, because, when — come into play.

The vocabulary covers daily life — work, housing, travel, health, weather. Anything unfamiliar is still hard, anything familiar runs smoothly.

Tenses: present, past, future8

Verbs: ser, estar, subjunctive7

Ser, estar and hay

A2ser or estar?What something is, against how it stands right now.A2hay or está?What there is takes hay; where something known is takes estar.

Requests and commands

A2The imperative for tú and vosotrosThe third person of the present — and eight outliers.A2Irregular commands: ven, hazEight short words you hear on the first day.

Can, must, want

A2Must: tener que, hay que, deberMy obligation, everybody's obligation, the moral one.A2Asking politelyThe conditional turns a demand into a request.

Conditional sentences

A2First conditional: si + presentsi plus present, and the main clause takes present, future or imperative.

Nouns, articles and adjectives16

Nouns and articles

A2Using the articleSpanish uses the article more often than English — and in one place not at all.A2Quantities and measuresA quantity takes de — and mucho almost never does.A2Gender of people and jobsFour patterns — and a group that only changes the article.

Adjectives

A2Where the adjective goesAfter the noun it distinguishes, in front it judges.A2Short forms: buen, granbueno becomes buen, grande becomes gran — but only in front.A2Comparing and gradingmás … que, and the superlative needs the article.A2Comparisons: más que, tan comoThree patterns — and before a number it is de, not que.

Pronouns

A2Object pronouns: lo, la, leWhat is done is lo/la — to whom is le.A2Where the pronouns goBefore the conjugated verb — or attached, but never in between.A2Reflexive verbs and seme, te, se — and the same se does three other jobs.A2Indefinites: alguien, nadieOne pair for people and one for things, and all four build the sentence differently depending on where they stand.A2Pronouns after a prepositionAfter para, de and con there are other forms — and two of them merge.

Prepositions

A2por and parapor looks back at the reason, para forward at the goal.A2The personal aBefore a person as an object there is an a — English has nothing like it.A2Prepositions of place and timeWhere something is takes en — where it is going takes a.A2Positions: encima, debajoThey all take de — and without a noun the de drops.

Sentence structure3

Questions and negation

A2Tag questions and short answersYour tag changes with the verb; here there are two words and neither of them moves.A2Questions with a preposition« Who with? » — the preposition never lands at the end here.

Subordinate clauses

A2Relative clausesque for almost everything — and it can never be left out.

Word lists at level A2

Lists: 16 · words: 753

Reading texts at level A2

Sentences from this level’s topics

La sopa es buena, pero está fría.The soup is good, but it has gone cold.

¿Hay wifi en el hotel?Is there wifi in the hotel?

¿Qué estás haciendo?What are you doing?

Sé que tienes razón.I know you are right.

Practise level A2 only