Spanish by level
Spanish books at A1 level
A1 is the level at which you can read a sentence, not yet a paragraph. Present tense, one clause at a time, and words you can half guess. This page shows what that looks like in real Spanish, gives you twenty lessons of it to read for nothing, and only then says which book carries the same Spanish on paper.
What A1 means, in numbers
- 20 lessons at this level on this site, lesson 1 to lesson 20, all free.
- 2,489 words of A1 Spanish to read straight through, and that is the story alone: the vocabulary, the grammar and the exercises come on top of it.
- 124 words a lesson on average, from 102 to 140. About five minutes of reading each.
- 4 review units, one every five lessons, that go back over the level instead of adding to it.
The Spanish itself
- Sentences of ten to fifteen words, one idea in each.
- The present tense doing almost all the work, with the preterite and the imperfect arriving in the last third of the level.
- No subjunctive, no conditional, and nothing reported at second hand.
- A vocabulary small enough that the same words come back on the next page, which is what makes them stick.
If the sample below reads slowly but reads, you are at A1 and you are in the right place. If it reads without effort, start at A2 instead.
What A1 Spanish actually reads like
The opening of Lesson 1, The gentleman of La Mancha, exactly as it stands on the page. Nothing here has been simplified for the example.
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En un pueblo de la Mancha vive un hidalgo pobre. Su nombre es Alonso Quijano.
In a village of La Mancha there lives a poor gentleman. His name is Alonso Quijano.
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Alonso Quijano es alto y delgado. Su cara es seca y su cuerpo es fuerte.
Alonso Quijano is tall and thin. His face is lean and his body is strong.
The 20 free lessons at A1
All of them are on this site, in full, with no account and no sign-up. Each one is a chapter of Don Quixote rewritten at A1, with its vocabulary, its grammar and its exercises. There are 4 review units among them as well, one every five lessons.
- The gentleman of La ManchaLesson 1SER + what you are. Gender and number
- The gentleman’s houseLesson 2UN, UNA, and when you use nothing at all
- A day in the villageLesson 3The present tense of -AR verbs
- The books of chivalryLesson 4The present tense of -ER and -IR verbs
- The great-grandfather's armourLesson 5Este, ese, aquel: the three distances
- The cardboard helmetLesson 6Mi, tu, su, nuestro
- The name of the horseLesson 7The adjective goes after. Muy, poco, mucho, bastante
- Don Quixote of La ManchaLesson 8Numbers, ordinals and age
- Dulcinea of El TobosoLesson 9Reflexive verbs and se
- The first ride outLesson 10Negation and yes-or-no questions
- One July morningLesson 11Question words
- The castle with four towersLesson 12Joining sentences: y, ni, o, pero
- The night of the armour vigilLesson 13GUSTAR and the pronouns me / te / le
- The innkeeper's adviceLesson 14The affirmative imperative: tú and usted
- The boy tied to the oak treeLesson 15The preterite: regular verbs
- The merchants from ToledoLesson 16Irregular preterites: the seven you cannot avoid
- The most beautiful woman in the worldLesson 17The imperfect, and when it is not the preterite
- The priest and the barber open the libraryLesson 18The present perfect and the participle
- A wall where the door used to beLesson 19The relative QUE, and how to stretch a noun
- Sancho Panza and the windmillsLesson 20Sentences that join up: porque, para, si, creo que
The books at A1
Everything above is free and stays free. The books exist for the two things a web page cannot do: being read away from a screen, and being read in order without twenty other links on the same page.
The course at A1, in two volumes
- A1 · Part 1Lessons 1 to 10, in paperback and on Kindle
- A1 · Part 2Lessons 11 to 20, in paperback and on Kindle
The same 20 lessons that are free above, printed with room to write the answers in. The whole course in one file is 11.99 € in EPUB and PDF.