Discussion: -er and -ir verbs

Purpose: You will practice your conversation skills in Spanish by listening to a recording and responding to the questions in Spanish. You will get exposure to different -er and -ir verbs, and you will practice changing them based on the subject of the sentence. You will also need to change the possessive pronouns as necessary so that your responses make sense. You may use the Encuesta PDF to help you prepare your answers before recording. Click here to download the Encuesta PDF.

Task: This activity has three parts.

Part 1. Listen to the following recording about student life.


Part 2. Using a computer or a voice memo function on a smartphone, record your answers to 5 of the questions in Spanish, and post your responses in Spanish to the discussion board. Others will be able to hear your responses in Spanish, just as you can hear theirs.

Part 3. Listen to the responses of two peers in your class. Then, prepare some general statements about you and your peers in Spanish using the “nosotros” form. Be sure to change possessive pronouns as necessary, too! You will choose three statements using the nosotros form and post them as a written comment on the discussion board.

Criteria: The components of this activity add up to 100%.

Parts 1 & 2. You will hear 10 questions, and you will choose 5 questions that you would like to answer. Record 5 responses in Spanish to those questions in a single audio file (if you make mistakes, it is okay and expected; start over from the beginning of the sentence and keep recording). Each response is worth 17%.

Part 3. Choose two peers and listen to their responses. After listening to your peers’ responses, you will make generalizations using the “nosotros” form. You will type in three generalizations and post them to the discussion board as a written comment in Spanish. You must include the names of your peers in these generalizations. Each written statement in the “nosotros” form is worth  7.5%.

Ejemplo:

Mark listens to the recording. He looks at the Encuesta PDF and uses Paso 1 to prepare his responses to the recorded prompt. He then records his responses in Spanish to the 5 questions he chooses to answer and uploads them to the discussion board. He has earned 85 points.

He then finds two peers, Andy and Rebecca, and he listens to their responses to the original prompt. He takes notes, and finds that he and Andy are a lot alike, but that he and Rebecca share few similarities. He looks at the Encuesta PDF and uses Paso 4 to prepare three statements, carefully changing the verb endings and possessive pronouns. He posts them as a written comment on the discussion board. He has earned 15 points. Here are his statements:

  1. Andy, Rebecca y yo vivimos con un compañero de cuarto.
  2. Andy y yo recibimos buenas notas en nuestras clases, pero Rebecca no recibe buenas notas en sus clases.
  3. Andy y yo comemos en la cafetería todos los días, pero Rebecca no come en la cafetería con frecuencia. Ella come en casa.