Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Spanish, Second Edition (2015)

The following paragraphs synthesize the material covered in each of the book’s ten parts. As you translate these paragraphs, you will pull together all that you have studied and learned through the end of that particular part. The Spanish translation for each paragraph is included in the Answer key.

I · La vida de un estudiante

Hi. I am a student in a school in Mexico. There are twenty students in my class. My teacher is my Aunt Sarita. I have a desk. In my desk there are books, pens, paper, a notebook, and a ruler. We study a lot. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we study English. We don’t study Spanish because we speak Spanish at home. I have three brothers and two sisters. My father works on a farm. On the farm there are lots of animals. My family and I sing a lot and every Saturday my mother plays the piano and we dance. Every Sunday we listen to the radio and we sing.

II · La comida buena

Every Wednesday my family and I eat in a new restaurant. My favorite food is pizza with cheese. My sister eats a hamburger with French fries. My mother eats rice with chicken, and my father eats a big salad and four eggs with toast. My brother Miguelito eats everything. We drink milk or water or, sometimes, lemonade. We always eat ice cream. Sometimes my grandmother eats ice cream in the morning. She doesn’t eat cereal with milk because she believes that ice cream is the perfect food. My grandmother is funny. Sometimes she hides ice cream in the car: not a good idea. She doesn’t understand that the ice cream is for the kitchen or the dining room, and not for the garage. She doesn’t believe that I don’t like ice cream. She lives in a wonderful house with two cats. The cats eat ice cream. My grandmother is kind.

III · La vida en la torre

Every day I open the windows of my living room and I discover something new, because I live on top of the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario. I watch the little cars and the birds, and sometimes there are musicians. I listen to the music from my window, because I don’t have a radio. I live with five friends: Julio is a doctor, Leonardo plays the piano, Humberto is a businessman, Milton sells clothing, and Arturo plays the piano but he doesn’t speak. Many people believe that we are brothers, but we are friends. I am an actor. Our families are from New York. Every day I write an e-mail to my parents. I have lots of questions because I don’t learn anything from their answers. My questions are, for example, “Do you all drink water every day?” “Do you all have a fish?” “When do you all dance?” Sometimes they don’t respond to my e-mails. I believe that they receive and read my e-mails, but I also believe that they don’t write many e-mails.

IV · Los horrores del aeropuerto

Good morning. I am here in the airport and I am in a bad mood because “my” airplane is not here. My airplane is in Paris. I am in Lisbon, Portugal. I speak with many people, but I don’t receive answers. I am sad. I am furious. I want to run and scream and break all the things in the airport. But I am in an airport. I have to be nice. I have to be friendly. I have to suffer. All the people in the airport are frustrated. They do not want to be here. They also don’t want to be on an airplane. They want to be in their house or in a hotel or in a restaurant with their friends. They don’t want to be frustrated; they want to be happy. I am hungry. I am very hungry. I want to eat something. Also, I am thirsty. I am very thirsty. Where is a restaurant? Are there restaurants in the airport? There are many stores, but there are no restaurants. I am wrong! There is a restaurant in the airport, but there are three thousand people there. I am not lucky today. I don’t like airplanes. I want to be on a train. I want to be in a train station, not in an airport. Trains are wonderful.

V · La vida en una gran ciudad

Good evening. My name is Richard Nightly. I am in Chicago, Illinois. Because it’s April and because it’s the spring(time), you probably believe that it is warm and sunny and nice out. You are wrong! It’s cold, and there is snow and there is frost and I believe that I see ice on the water of Lake Michigan. And it’s windy! Because I live in a big city, I don’t have to have a car. I am a student at the University of Chicago, and normally I ride my bike to the university. Some students go by bus and other students go by taxi or the train, but I like the bicycle. I study English at the University. When I don’t have to study, I play tennis and basketball with my friends. Sometimes we eat pizza and we play cards or pool. I swim a lot, but not in Lake Michigan. Every Saturday my friends and I go to the Field Museum at ten o’clock in the morning. Today there is a program about George Washington Carver, the inventor of peanut butter. I’m hungry. I want a peanut butter sandwich.

VI · Bienvenidos al Museo de los Periódicos

Hello. Welcome to our museum. On entering the building, you have to write your name on the wall. You cannot eat here. You have to put your extra large pizza in the waste basket (near the staircase) or in the garbage can (near the mailbox on the street). You can decide. We have a good fan here and we are lucky because the ham on the pizza smells terrible. Are we ready? Can you all see the large fireplace in the hall? The fireplace is bigger than an airplane. If you want to make a fire in the fireplace, you need more firewood than there is in one hundred twenty-five trees. We do not have many fires here, especially because our museum is a museum of newspapers. A fire near the newspapers is worse than a fire near an ocean. Our museum is better than every other museum of newspapers in the world, because our building is bigger than Buckingham Palace and older than the Parthenon. Every year five thousand people visit our wonderful building.

VII · El almuerzo

It’s one in the afternoon and I’m hungry and I want to eat lunch. Usually I eat lunch at noon or at 12:15, but today I have to do lots of things and I can’t eat when I want to eat. At times my friends and I eat lunch in the park, but today it’s too cold and we don’t want to do anything in the park. We’re going to a new restaurant on Adams Street, near our school. My best friend thinks that this restaurant is better than all the other restaurants in our city, but my best friend lies all the time. I hear from other people that the chicken here is better than the hamburger, but it costs more, too. When I go to a restaurant I sample lots of new foods. Some people are afraid to sample new foods, but when I try something and it’s horrible or smells bad, or if I bite something and learn that it is a mouse or a rat, I never return to the restaurant. Also, if I find a mosquito in my food, I return the plate to the kitchen where the waiters and the cook solve the problem. Sometimes when a person doesn’t have enough money, he or she washes the restaurant’s dishes.

VIII · El lugar misterioso

Do you want to know something? I don’t know anybody here. I don’t know why I’m here. And I don’t know why you’re here. I also don’t know you. Who are you and why are you here? My name is Horatio and I’m here because every day I read the newspaper and every day somebody new writes about this place. Those people believe that this place is wonderful. But those people are wrong. They don’t know anything. They don’t know me. They don’t know you. They don’t know anybody. Do you know them? I don’t know them and I don’t want to know them. I know that I want to return to my house and sleep. But first I want to go to the library because I need to return some books to the librarian. I know her. Her name is Marian.

IX · El baño: El corazón de la casa

If you read a book about life during the 1800s, you learn a lot about people and their bathrooms. I have a book that describes a typical family and how they live in 1880. They have a big house, but they have only one bathroom. The people in the house take a bath once each week. They don’t take showers because they don’t have a shower. They wash their hair and they dry their hair with a towel. They don’t have a hair dryer. They brush their teeth once or twice each day. They don’t have dental floss. Some men shave, but many men have a beard. They make their soap and shampoo and they don’t apply conditioner to their hair. Today it’s completely different! Many houses have two or three bathrooms or more. People usually take a bath or they shower every day—when they wake up or before going to bed. They wash their hair with elegant shampoos and conditioners. They dry their hair with a hair dryer. They apply makeup in front of large mirrors and they always use dental floss after brushing their teeth. My grandfather tells me that he takes a bath once each week—if he needs it or not! My grandfather is very funny. Some people today use the bathroom for an “office.” They sit in the tub and speak on the telephone or watch television or study or read a book. Some people eat in the tub. The typical bathtub measures sixty inches (five feet). The typical refrigerator measures sixty inches (five feet) also. But no one takes a bath in the refrigerator.

X · La sala desesperada de esperanza

Hi. I’m in the waiting room of the hospital. I know that I shouldn’t be here, but my mother tells me that I have to speak to the doctor. She thinks that I’m sick but I feel fine. My mother loves drama. I don’t like it. I have a headache. It doesn’t matter to me. It seems to me that when I have a headache, I should be able to take an aspirin and live my life. But for my mother, when she has a headache, it gives her a reason for going to every hospital and speaking with every doctor in the country. Usually we have to sit for two or three hours in the waiting room. It’s miserable. I don’t like it. It bugs me. After ten minutes I want to return home. But nothing is more interesting to my mother than a hospital. She should be a doctor. But in order to be a doctor, she needs to go to the university for eight years (at least). And if she’s always in the university, she can’t sit in these ugly chairs in this horrible waiting room. Here we are. I am bored; she watches the fish. I’m going to read another magazine.