Instruction

Reading like an intermediate learner

In Spanish 1 you read single sentences. In Spanish 2 you will read strings of sentences, short connected texts, and your job changes. You no longer need to know every word. You need the main idea first and the key details second. Readers who stop at every unknown word lose the thread; readers who keep going and come back almost always understand more.

Use four moves every time you read.

1. Predict from the title and images. The title “Los nombres cuentan historias” uses three words you know: nombres (names), cuentan (they tell, from contar), historias (stories or histories). Before reading a line, you can predict that the text is about names that tell stories.
2. Use cognates, and watch for false friends. Insecto, montañas, historia, colores look like English words and mean what they look like. A few do not: actual means “current,” librería means “bookstore,” and largo means “long,” not “large.”
3. Use word families. If you know nieve (snow), you can work out nevada (snow-covered). If you know alto (tall), Palo Alto means “tall tree.”
4. Read the verbs. Every Spanish sentence turns on its verb, and the ending tells you who is doing it. In los pueblos originarios ya tenían nombres you may not know tenían yet, but the root ten- points to tener: they had names. You will learn this past form in Spanish 2B; for now, the root is enough.

A worked example

Take the sentence Sierra Nevada significa “montañas con nieve.” Cognate: significa = signifies, means. Known words: montañas, con, nieve. Main idea: the name Sierra Nevada means “mountains with snow.” You understood it without a dictionary.

The map has layers

California’s map is a record of history. Hundreds of places carry Spanish names given after 1769, when Spain began building missions and presidios along the coast, and in the Mexican period after 1821: Sacramento, Fresno (ash tree), Mariposa (butterfly), Salinas (salt marshes), Paso Robles (pass of the oaks), Escondido (hidden). But Spanish was not the first language of these places. The Chumash, Tongva, Ohlone, Kumeyaay and many other Native nations had already named their homelands, and some of those names survive: Ojai comes from a Chumash word for the moon, and Malibu from the Chumash town name Humaliwo. Near today’s downtown Los Angeles stood the Tongva village of Yaanga. These nations are not only history: their members live in California today and are working to keep their languages alive.

So when you read a California map, you read three stories at once: Native, Spanish and Mexican, and the present. Today you will read an original article about this, answer questions about its main idea and details, and start a map note that you will build on all year.

Formative check

Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.