Live Session 2:

Adjectives of nationality and present-tense forms of the verb "ir"

There will be a Final Exam section that focuses on adjectives of nationality.
 

• This is one of the Final Exam sections where students struggle the  most.
• It's for this reason that we are focusing on adjectives of nationality, and by extension, adjective-noun agreement, in this Live Session.
  
   
• Two major tips to start:
• Make sure you actually learn these adjectives. It is your responsibility to know what they mean and how they look when spelled correctly.
• Study the bottom half of textbook page 81 very carefully.

Adjectives of nationality

3 tips about what not to do when working in this Final Exam section:
 

• 1. Do not select any response that features a capitalized Spanish adjective of nationality. This is always a false choice.
   
• 2.Do not select any response that is misspelled or missing a required accent mark. This is also a false choice.
   
• 3. Do not automatically select the masculine, singular form of the adjective as a response to every question. This will cause you to lose a lot of points.
   
• You need to select the form of the adjective that agrees to the fullest extent possible with the noun or pronoun it's modifying.

Practice examples for this section:

The prompt will look like this:

Vladmir y Svetlana son de Rusia. Ellos son ____________.

• rusianos
• ruso
• rusos
• Rusos

• Remember, no capitalized forms are valid, and neither are misspelled forms.
• What are the 2 forms we can immediately rule out, based on this knowledge?
• rusianos (this is *not* a word)
• Rusos (we really do *never* capitalize adjectives of nationality in standard Spanish)

Vladmir y Svetlana son de Rusia. Ellos son ____________.

• rusianos
• ruso
• rusos
• Rusos

• At this point, we are between masculine, singular "ruso" and masculine, plural "rusos".
• We have to choose the adjective that agrees in gender and in number with the masculine, plural pronoun "ellos". 
• Which one is that?

Mi amiga Yoko es de Japón. Ella es ____________.

• japonés
• Japanesa
• japónesa
• japonesa

• Remember, no capitalized forms are valid, and neither are misspelled forms.
• What are the 2 forms we can immediately rule out, based on this knowledge?
• japónesa (this is *not* a word--there is no accent mark in the feminine, singular form--only in the masculine, singular form)
• Japanesa (not a word, and remember: *never* capitalize adjectives of nationality in standard Spanish)

Mi amiga Yoko es de Japón. Ella es ____________.

• japonés
• Japanesa
• japónesa
• japonesa

• At this point, we are between masculine, singular "japonés" and feminine, singular "japonesa".
• We have to choose the adjective that agrees in gender and in number with the feminine, singular pronoun "ella". 
• Which one is that?

The irregular verb "ir"

• This verb is wholly irregular. This means its forms cannot be created via the normal practice of derivation and conjugation, and, because of this, they must be memorized.

• There will be a Final Exam section where you have to supply the correct present-tense conjugated forms of this verb.

• This is a Final Exam section where students often do weird things that make them lose lots of points.

• Because of that, we are going over this topic together now.

Bonus topic: the irregular verb "ir" 

Please make sure you've committed the following forms to memory.

Let's practice saying them aloud:

So, again, in the Final Exam section that focuses on present-tense forms of the verb "ir":

• 1. Do not write conjugated forms of any other verbs in this section! You will earn a 0 for every response where you do this.
• 2. All answers in this section will consist of one of these 5 words: 
• voy (present-tense yo-form)
• vas (present-tense tú-form)
• va (present-tense 3rd-person-singular form)
• vamos (present-tense nosotros-form)
• van (present-tense 3rd-person-plural form)
• Those forms are the only valid responses in this section. Please memorize them.
   
• 3. Remember: we do not use vosotros-forms in this course. Do not write "vais" for any answer in this section.
  We'll practice with the "Prueba de Práctica", a Supersite exercise that was not assigned.