10th April 2020

¡Hola!

In many places, not just Spain, Easter is a moment when there's a long weekend break and people travel, take a break, visit their families etc. This year of course, most of us are thinking that Easter has been cancelled. In Spain all the traditional processions and masses that would bring the crowds to the street and the congregations to the churches are indeed cancelled. Fortunately, as ever during the lockdown period, the imagination sets us free! Here's an article with some ideas for getting away while not actually leaving the house:

• Así puedes viajar esta Semana Santa (sin salir de casa)

Here's a sentence from the article and its grammatical breakdown:

• Aunque + El Presente vs El Presente de Subjuntivo
• Conjugate regular -ir verbs like vivir in El Presente
• Forming the plural of nouns ending in a consonant (except -z)
• Using para (and not por) for purpose, goal or objective
• Using algo to say something or anything

And as it's Friday, I'd like to share one of our writing challenges. These, along with our dictations, are sent to our Premium users every Friday, but today we are offering this writing challenge about a traditional Spanish Easter cake for free:

• A2 writing challenge: Mona De Pascua

If you have never done one of our Writing Challenges before, here's some guidance:

• Don't think of it as translation, Writing Challenges are more like guided writing.
• Writing challenges are self-scoring exercises, meaning that for each phrase you’ll be offered corrections and alternatives to help you pinpoint your mistakes. Each line is marked out of 5 and we suggest taking off a point per mistake, but really the marking is up to you! For example, you decide how important punctuation and correct accentuation is, it's perfectly fine to be kind to yourself because you made a typo or pressed submit too soon!
• Pay attention to the hints! For example, if there are many synonyms for a word, or if you should use a specific verb, these are indicated here.
• It's not easy to translate natural-sounding English into natural-sounding Spanish, where the Spanish is significantly different to the English you will be given a literal translation in the hint.
• Once you’re done, you can read and listen to our suggested text in Spanish, and also see a list of grammar topics covered in the exercise, you can add these to your notebook(s).

 

 

Saludos,

Shui