Leaving Cert Spanish Help!

doyle97

Hey, long story short my spanish teacher isn't the best, she basically teaches my higher level class at an ordinary standard.

We spend about a week on a comprehension but she doesn't translate it with us or anything, just gives us the same vocab over and over again, not based on any particular topic or in any order (she has never given us vocab on the weather and I just found out it is a guaranteed question on the tape each year). We have only done two roleplays so far but I'm not worried about them as I can learn them in my own time and find them pretty simple.

My biggest fear is general written spanish, I'm very poor with verbs and basic grammar as we don't do anything on it really. I think she gave us one piece of written homework in 5th year and we are yet to even look at the diary entry/note/letter/dialogue section of the exam papers. I've come to the conclusion I'm just going to have to teach myself as best I can between now and June. The notes she have given us for the opinion piece don't even sound good in English nevermind spanish.

Can someone just please give me a list of topics I need to know under the headings of; Oral, Grammar, Vocab and Opinion Piece. Any links or notes are also greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help!

Canard

In the last few years, the language exams have sort of taken a turn away from 'topics' per se and seem to be mixing it all up a bit more, so your best bet would really be to learn useful phrases and general vocabulary. I find opinion things can be really helpful. An absolutely invaluable book for that kind of thing is Palabra por Palabra -- I didn't know about those books til college but they're so helpful!

You could practice writing things and get feedback from even native speakers if you want to, there are sites that let you do that, such as http://lang-8.com/.

A really good resource is this tumblr blog run by an American girl -- she has a list of resources here and a list of useful links (of explanations etc) here. It's a lot, but you'll really find everything you could possibly need on it I think.

If I were you, I'd have a look at some of those links and then practice exam papers a bit when you feel more comfortable with the grammar and vocabulary that you need. Another very useful resource is parallel text books, I used to use the penguin one, it's great because you don't have to stop to look up words, they're right on the next page! But they can be quite literary and as such maybe a bit hard to read depending on your level.

Sorry if that's all a bit vague, but I hope it helps a bit!

doyle97

That's perfect thank you so much for your response! I'll be sure to have a look at these!