18 Febrero 2005 (viernes)

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Tarea

Ejercicios 9-26, 9-27
Pagina 307

WebCT Exercises: March 2, 2005 (Wednesday)
9-6, 9-7, 9-8, 9-10, 9-13, 9-14, 9-15, 9-17

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Examenes

We have a quiz on Monday, February 21.
Our next test is two weeks from next Wednesday, on March 2.
We have another in-class composition in the class before the exam, on February 28.

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Notas

Today, we again focused heavily on the difference between para and por. I still cannot emphasize how important it is to practice this over and over. This weekend, I hope to post some practice exercises to maybe help you get to where you know this cold. Seriously, you do NOT want to have to stop every few seconds when trying to speak Spanish to figure out whether you're supposed to say para or por. Or even worse, screw it up in conversation and have the person to whom you are talking think you mean something much different than what you actually do mean.

We also covered making some common adjectives into adverbs by adding -mente to the end of them. We do this in English too, but we use the suffix -ly. For example, in English, the word frequent becomes frequently. (How many people remember "Lolly Lolly Lolly, get your adverbs here"?) In Spanish, the word difícil becomes difícilmente.

When you add -mente to an adjective that ends in -o (for example, lento), be sure to change it to -a (same example, lentamente). Also, bear in mind that some adverbs do not end in -mente. Two very common examples are muy and bien.

It may also worth giving a 5¢ review of what an adverb is and what makes it different from an adjective. An adjective describes a noun. For example, the word estúpido in Eres un tonto estúpido (you're a stupid idiot). An adverb describes either a verb or an adjective. For example, the word estúpidamente in Él mentió estúpidamente a la policía (he lied stupidly to the police). In the first example, stupid describes the noun idiot. In the second example, stupidly describes how he lied.

The problem is that in English, a lot of people use bad grammar by using adjectives when they're really supposed to use adverbs. For example, most people think this is a grammatically correct sentence: You're driving too slow. In that sentence, slow is being used to describe the verb drive, which makes it an adverb. The problem is that slow is an adjective; the grammatically correct sentence is: You're driving too slowly. In Spanish, you should use an adverb, too: Estás conduciendo demasiado lentamente. In this sentence, lento would be just plain wrong.

That's the 5¢ review, I expect to get my nickel on Monday. Until then, hasta luego...

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Wednesday's homework assignment was not collected at the end of class.