Spanish

About this course

The language taught here is Spanish, and eleventh grade is the literature year. Two full units survey the Spanish-language canon: Cervantes and Don Quijote across two lessons, with the famous opening sentence printed in the original and translated and its joke explained, then Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Cortazar, the Generation of '98, Lorca, Vargas Llosa, Borges, Rosario Castellanos, Latin American theater, the essay as a genre, the oral tradition of romances and corridos, biblical themes in Spanish literature, and contemporary Christian writers. Grammar assumes the subjunctive is already familiar and works on mastery: both subjunctive tenses across all clause types, sequence of tenses, all four perfect tenses, passive voice, relative clauses with cuyo and el cual, nominalization, infinitives and gerunds, prepositions, lo plus adjective, advanced pronoun placement, and sentence variety for style. Vocabulary covers false cognates, idioms, proverbs with their biblical parallels, and specialized fields from medicine and law to architecture, finance, and philosophy.

The culture units are the most substantive in the whole sequence and do not avoid hard material. There are lessons on the Latin American independence movements, the Spanish Civil War, economic inequality, machismo, women in Hispanic society, immigration and the diaspora, politics and the church, and Spanish-language media and how to judge its reliability. One lesson takes up liberation theology directly and handles it in three parts: what it gets right, drawn from Amos, Luke, and James, what it gets wrong, naming its Marxist categories and its reduction of the gospel to social transformation, and then a biblical framework for justice that is gospel-first and explicitly nonviolent. Writing runs from analytical, argumentative, and expository essays through a testimonio, a college application essay, and finally a research paper in Spanish with source evaluation, quotation integration, revision, and a capstone essay.

There are 144 lessons in 12 units of 12, at about 40 minutes each, with units 7 through 12 labeled as second courses in each strand. Lessons here are the longest in the sequence, running well past a thousand words with headings, tables, original Spanish excerpts with translation, and a substantial written assignment. Every lesson ends with a ten-question quiz that grades itself. Be aware of one gap that this grade names but cannot fill: an entire lesson prepares your student for the AP Spanish oral exam, explaining the simulated conversation and the cultural comparison task, and its own advice is to speak daily, record yourself, and have someone play the conversation partner. The course itself contains no audio and no recorded speech, so all of that has to come from your family or an outside arrangement. As reading and writing preparation this is a strong college-level year; as speaking preparation it is a syllabus, not a practice. It assumes the subjunctive, the compound tenses, and comfort reading unadapted Spanish coming in.

What the course covers

• Cervantes and Don Quijote in the original Spanish
• Sor Juana, Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Allende, Cortazar, Lorca, and Borges
• The Generation of '98, Latin American theater, and the oral tradition
• Both subjunctive tenses, sequence of tenses, and all four perfect tenses
• Passive voice, relative clauses, nominalization, infinitives, and gerunds
• False cognates, idioms, collocations, and Spanish proverbs with biblical parallels
• Formal debate, interviews, register and code-switching, and oral exam tasks
• Liberation theology weighed against a biblical framework for justice
• Culture: the Spanish Civil War, immigration, inequality, machismo, and the church today
• The Spanish research paper: sources, citation, quotation, revision, and voice

What your student will be able to do

• Read and analyze canonical Spanish literature in the original language
• Write a thesis-driven literary analysis essay in Spanish
• Produce a researched paper in Spanish with evaluated sources and citations
• Handle every advanced grammatical structure, including nominalization and relative clauses
• Weigh a theological or cultural movement against Scripture and argue it in writing
• Vary sentence structure deliberately to develop a personal style in Spanish

Scope and sequence

All 12 units of Spanish for Grade 11, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 144 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 144 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.