Teaching with this course

Comprehensible input

The course was not written to fit a method, but it ends up sitting squarely in one. Every lesson gives the new words before the text rather than after it. The story comes first and the rule comes second. The English sits on the line under the Spanish, so nothing is ever guessed at. The grammar section opens with three sentences taken from the story and one question about them, and only explains once the class has looked. And no lesson uses anything a student has not already met, across all ninety of them, because they were written in order and checked against each other.

In other words, it is comprehensible input with a syllabus attached, and the story is Cervantes rather than an invented one. If you teach with CI or TPRS you will recognise the shape of it immediately. If you teach from a textbook, it works as the reading your textbook does not have.

What you get

Two files for each of the eight volumes. The classroom pack holds one worksheet per lesson, with the exercises laid out to be written on by hand, plus the tests that go with that volume. The answer key holds the answers to all of it. Both are set on Letter paper with generous margins, so they print without clipping on A4 as well.

There is no account to create, no email to hand over and nothing to install. The files are ordinary PDFs and the links below download them.

The packs

• A1 Part 1 Lessons 1 to 10 Classroom pack · Answer key
• A1 Part 2 Lessons 11 to 20 Classroom pack · Answer key
• A2 Part 1 Lessons 21 to 31 Classroom pack · Answer key
• A2 Part 2 Lessons 32 to 42 Classroom pack · Answer key
• B1 Part 1 Lessons 43 to 54 Classroom pack · Answer key
• B1 Part 2 Lessons 55 to 66 Classroom pack · Answer key
• B2 Part 1 Lessons 67 to 78 Classroom pack · Answer key
• B2 Part 2 Lessons 79 to 90 Classroom pack · Answer key

Permission

You may print these files and photocopy them for your own classes, as many times as you need, without asking and without paying. That is what they are for. You may hand them out, project them, and put them on your school's internal system for your own students.

What is not allowed is republishing them somewhere else as your own, selling them, or posting the answer keys openly on the web. The text of Don Quixote is in the public domain. The adaptations, the exercises and the answers are original work and stay under copyright.

How one lesson runs in class

Every one of the ninety lessons has the same seven parts, always in the same order, which is what makes the course teachable without preparation. A fifty-minute class fits one lesson comfortably.

1. Words first, five minutes. Each lesson opens with the six or so new words the story is about to use, with a note on each. Put them on the board and have the class say them. Every word on this site has a recording, so the pronunciation model is one click away.
2. The heads-up, one minute. A single sentence telling the class what to watch for in the text. Read it aloud and leave it on the board.
3. The story, ten minutes. Seven short paragraphs of Cervantes retold at the level of the lesson, with the English on the line underneath. Read the Spanish aloud first with the English covered. Then read it again and let them check.
4. Comprehension, five minutes. Four questions, answered in Spanish. These are the ones to do out loud rather than on paper.
5. Grammar, twelve minutes. The lesson does not start with the rule. It gives three sentences from the story, asks one question about them, and only then explains. Do it in that order on the board and let them find it. The explanation that follows includes what the same thing does in English and the mistake English speakers make, which is usually where the class argues.
6. Exercises, fifteen minutes. This is the worksheet from the pack. Four exercises per lesson out of eleven kinds, and they rotate, so no two lessons in a row are the same drill. The speaking one is done in pairs.
7. Can-do check, two minutes. Four statements the class should now be able to tick. Read them out. Whatever nobody can tick is what starts the next class.

Every sixth lesson or so is a review unit instead, with no new grammar. Those are the natural place for the test.

A scheme of work

At one lesson a week, one CEFR level fills one school year of three terms with room to spare for tests, holidays and the weeks that get eaten. That gives the whole course over four years, which is the shape of a secondary school language programme.

At two lessons a week the same four years become two, one level per semester, which is closer to a university pace. At an intensive four a week, A1 takes five weeks and the whole course takes a little under six months.

The review units are not counted in those ranges. They fall roughly every sixth lesson and each one takes a class of its own.

What your students need

Nothing. The whole course is on this site, in order, free, with no account and no advertising, from Unit 0 to Lesson 90. A student with a phone has the lessons, the recordings, the glossary and the verb tables.

If you would rather your class worked on paper, the same ninety lessons are printed as eight volumes, and each volume is the course book and the workbook in one. A class set is ordered like any other book. Nothing in them is held back from this site.

Where to start

Take the lesson list on the home page, find where your course actually is, and download the pack for the volume that holds it. If your class is starting from nothing, that is A1 Part 1.

If something in the packs does not work in a real classroom, it is worth telling me. This course was written by a teacher and it gets fixed when it is wrong.