Spanish by level
Spanish books at B2 level
B2 is the level at which graded readers stop being useful, because you have outgrown the grading. The last twenty-four lessons of the course are built for exactly that moment: they take you from adapted Spanish to the sentence Cervantes actually wrote in 1605, with the difference explained rather than smoothed away.
What B2 means, in numbers
- 24 lessons at this level on this site, lesson 67 to lesson 90, all free.
- 13,050 words of B2 Spanish to read straight through, and that is the story alone: the vocabulary, the grammar and the exercises come on top of it.
- 544 words a lesson on average, from 456 to 684. About fifteen 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
- The imperfect subjunctive, and unreal conditions: si tuviera, daría.
- The compound tenses of both moods, and what they let you say about blame.
- Register: two people at one table speaking two different Spanishes, and what that tells you about them.
- Old spelling, deliberate archaism, and how to read a page of 1605 without a modern edition holding your hand.
After B2 there is no book to sell you. There are eleven free pages of unadapted Cervantes with the apparatus a C1 reader needs: the C1 and C2 pages.
What B2 Spanish actually reads like
The opening of Lesson 67, Camacho’s Wedding Feast, exactly as it stands on the page. Nothing here has been simplified for the example.
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En un prado verde, junto al pueblo de Quiteria, habían levantado unas enramadas para que los novios comiesen a la sombra.
In a green meadow beside Quiteria’s village, leafy arbours had been raised so that the bride and groom could eat in the shade.
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Camacho el rico había mandado traer músicos y danzantes de tres leguas a la redonda.
Camacho the rich had sent for musicians and dancers from three leagues around.
The 24 free lessons at B2
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 B2, with its vocabulary, its grammar and its exercises. There are 4 review units among them as well, one every five lessons.
- Camacho’s Wedding FeastLesson 67Para que and a fin de que: the subjunctive of purpose
- Basilio’s TrickLesson 68Aunque: one word, two moods
- Down into Montesinos’ CaveLesson 69The imperfect subjunctive: how it is built
- Dulcinea Asks for Six RealesLesson 70Si tuviera seis reales, se los daría
- Master Pedro’s Puppet ShowLesson 71Reporting what somebody ordered
- Paying for the Broken PuppetsLesson 72Set phrases and ways of exaggerating
- The Enchanted Boat on the EbroLesson 73Guessing: deber de, quizá and tal vez
- Arrival at the Duke’s CastleLesson 74Speaking like a duke, and what that hides
- The Duchess and SanchoLesson 75Two registers at one table
- The Countess Trifaldi’s BeardLesson 76Old Spanish and how to parody it
- The Flight of ClavileñoLesson 77Will have happened and would have happened
- Sancho Governs BaratariaLesson 78How an official document talks
- The Judgements of SanchoLesson 79Chaining reasons together
- The Governor Goes HungryLesson 80If he had eaten, he would have been ill
- Sancho Gives Up the GovernorshipLesson 81Hubiera outside sentences with si
- Ricote, the Exiled NeighbourLesson 82The subjunctive, all of it at once
- Doña Rodríguez and the DuelLesson 83Dar por and darse por
- Arriving in BarcelonaLesson 84Hay, está and es for describing a place
- The Visit to the Printing HouseLesson 85Saying what a word means and what a book is called
- Roque Guinart the BanditLesson 86Cause and consequence: how a man ends up where he is
- Defeat on the BeachLesson 87Resignation: what you say when nothing can be done
- The Plan to Become ShepherdsLesson 88Suffixes: how Spanish manufactures new words
- The Will of Alonso QuijanoLesson 89Que plus subjunctive, with nothing in front
- The End of the StoryLesson 90The whole of B2, and the whole course behind it
The books at B2
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 B2, in two volumes
- B2 · Part 1Lessons 67 to 78, in paperback and on Kindle
- B2 · Part 2Lessons 79 to 90, in paperback and on Kindle
The same 24 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.