Foreword
Goal and Scope
The goal of this tutorial is to achieve daily usage of Spanish: conversations in daily life, simple daily reading and writing (such as text messages and emails). To achieve this goal, this tutorial covers basic Spanish grammar for the most important scenarios in daily life (present, past, future), but does not pursue high-end and complex grammar.
This tutorial teaches Latin American Spanish (Español latino), not Spanish from Spain (Español de España). The relationship between the two is somewhat like American English and British English. The following two reasons make the former more worth to learn.:
Español latino has a wider range of application. 90% of native Spanish speakers worldwide speak Español latino. The largest Spanish-speaking country in the world is Mexico, and the second largest is the United States (with 65 million Spanish speakers!), both speak Español latino. Therefore, Español latino is a Spanish variety with more international influence than Español de España.
Español latino is simpler. It has simplified pronunciation and grammar. For example, Español latino has abandoned the second-person plural vosotros (you all), and uniformly uses the honorific ustedes (you all, grammatically equivalent to the third-person plural), so verb conjugations are reduced from 6 to 5, reducing the memory burden.
The basic principle of this tutorial is pragmatic — "Learn on a need-to-know basis.". If a language scenario can be solved by a simple solution, do not learn a more complex one. For instance, the "Near Future" tense based on the ir + a + inf. structure can describe most scenarios involving the future, so we only learn this Near Future tense (which can be completed in an hour), and do not learn the future tense based on verb conjugation.
Based on this principle, in terms of tenses, we will learn the following tenses in this tutorial to cover the basic daily life timeline of "Present - Past - Future":
- Present Indicative
- Near Future
- Imperfect Past
- Simple Past
- Present Progressive
Who is this tutorial for?
Those who like logical thinking and rule-based language learning, rather than language learning based on perceptual memory. Due to its linguistic "purity", coupled with the maintenance work of a unified manager (RAE) in the past 300 years, Spanish is a language with very strong logic and rules — most of its grammar is developed based on rules and logic. If you can master these rules and logic, you will get twice the result with half the effort. Of course, the premise is that you like this logic and rule-based language learning method.
Who is this tutorial NOT for?
Learners who like learning modes based on perceptual memory and natural experience, rather than logic and rules. The basic idea of this tutorial is to regularize everything that can be regularized, and learn language based on rules as much as possible. But this learning method is not suitable for everyone.
Learners whose goal is for advanced usage scenarios can use this tutorial as the first stage of learning, and enter higher-level learning after completing it. For example, if you hope to conduct complex text writing (thesis, commercial contracts, etc.) or literary writing, this tutorial is not enough--but it could be a very good starting point.
What does this tutorial NOT cover?
This tutorial only covers basic tenses covering the basic daily "Present - Past - Future" timeline; "advanced" tenses other than these are not included. Regarding the subjunctive mood, this tutorial only covers a few basic sentence patterns to meet the needs of basic daily scenarios, and does not conduct systematic learning of the subjunctive mood.
The following three items are necessary components of language learning, but this tutorial does not cover them and they need to be learned and practiced separately:
Vocabulary learning.
Listening
Speaking
Note: Although Duolingo's "pure perceptual learning" efficiency is low, if used as a supplement to this tutorial — to learn vocabulary, listening, and speaking, it is still very useful.