Spanish

About this course

The language taught here is Spanish, and ninth grade is where it becomes a serious high school course. The grammar covers essentially the whole verb system. Your student works through preterite and imperfect in review, then the present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, and conditional perfect, then the present subjunctive and imperfect subjunctive in full conjugation, then the subjunctive in noun clauses, adjective clauses, and adverbial clauses, and finally si-clauses at all three levels: Si tengo tiempo voy for the real case, Si tuviera tiempo iria for the hypothetical, and Si hubiera tenido tiempo habria ido for the past contrary to fact. A second grammar unit adds formal and informal commands, passive voice and se constructions, relative pronouns including cuyo, and the present perfect subjunctive. Vocabulary is academic and adult throughout, covering political, legal, economic, philosophical, literary, theological, medical, and environmental terms.

The reading is authentic and demanding. Lessons take up Latin American independence literature, subjunctive usage in real texts, wondrous realism with a Christian assessment, Neruda's love poetry, colonial missionary writing, contemporary evangelical literature, political speeches with rhetorical analysis, scholarly Spanish, journalism, Sor Juana and colonial poetry, historiography, and a novel excerpt. One lesson is a study of the Reina-Valera Bible itself, including how Casiodoro de Reina translated it as a refugee and how comparing Juan 3:16 in Spanish and English exposes grammar the English hides. Writing runs from thesis and body paragraph construction through comparative, argumentative, and cultural-analysis essays, research writing with citation, an AP-style analytical essay, timed writing, style and voice, and a personal essay of the kind some Spanish-language universities require on an application.

There are 144 lessons in 12 units of 12, at about 40 minutes each, which is roughly double the daily time of the middle grades. Units 7 through 12 mirror the first six in theme, vocabulary, conversation, grammar, culture, reading, and writing, with different lessons at a higher level, and the second reading and writing units are labeled Advanced. A lesson is a substantial reading with conjugation charts or vocabulary tables, worked examples, a Scripture connection, and a written assignment, usually eight sentences or a paragraph of a hundred and fifty words in Spanish. Every lesson ends with a ten-question quiz that grades itself. There is still no audio in this course, which is worth weighing at this level: your student can reach genuine reading and writing competence here without ever hearing native Spanish, so if speaking matters to your family you will need to add a conversation partner, a church, or an outside resource. The conversation lessons, including debate, job interview, and travel scenarios, are written as scripts to work through with someone. A dozen or so lessons point to outside texts. It assumes solid command of present tense, ser and estar, the past tenses, and object pronouns coming in.

What the course covers

• The complete compound tense system: present, past, future, and conditional perfect
• Present and imperfect subjunctive in noun, adjective, and adverbial clauses
• Si-clauses at all three levels of reality and hypothesis
• Commands, passive voice, se constructions, and relative pronouns
• Academic vocabulary: political, legal, economic, philosophical, and theological
• Formal debate, career and faith conversations, interviews, and travel scenarios
• Reading Latin American literature, poetry, journalism, and scholarly Spanish
• The Reina-Valera Bible, its translation history, and Spanish-English comparison
• Academic and argumentative essay writing in Spanish with citation
• Culture: regional dialects, Semana Santa, Pre-Columbian civilizations, and Latin American Protestantism

What your student will be able to do

• Use every major Spanish tense, including the four compound tenses, accurately
• Form and apply the subjunctive in noun, adjective, and adverbial clauses
• Build conditional sentences at all three levels with the right tense pairing
• Read unadapted Spanish literature and journalism and analyze it critically
• Write a thesis-driven analytical essay in Spanish with integrated quotations
• Evaluate a secular Spanish text against a Christian worldview in writing

Scope and sequence

All 12 units of Spanish for Grade 9, 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.