Gordon Smith-Duran, Author at Lightspeed Spanish

7 THE PAST I have eaten or I ate? When to use the Present Perfect

By Gordon Smith-Duran • October 14, 2016

¡Hola, Socios In this lesson we cover a confusing little topic of when you are able to use the Spanish Present Perfect and when you can’t. Certainly, for all students this is a bit of […]

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6 HELP & ADVICE Being SCARED Ser Socio LightSpeed Spanish

By Gordon Smith-Duran • October 7, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! ¡Que no cunda el pánico! This week we are dealing with a fun topic but one that comes up more often than you might think. And that is being or getting scared in

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5 GRAMMAR The Personal A in Action LightSpeed Spanish

By Gordon Smith-Duran • October 6, 2016

¡Hola Socios! This week we are posting the missing lesson 5 on the Personal A in Spanish. We left this lesson until later as a way of reviewing the earlier Chalk and Talk session on

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Ser Socio Chalk Talk Verbs

5 VERBS The verb PEGAR and explaining ¡QUE SÍ! and ¡QUE NO!

By Gordon Smith-Duran • October 6, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! In this Chalk and Talk session we are dealing with a couple of subjects that have been requested by Brenda Olsen. ¡Gracias, Brenda! The first is the verb PEGAR which means to stick.

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5 VERBS The verb PEGAR and explaining ¡QUE SÍ! and ¡QUE NO! Read Post »

Ser Socio Chalk Talk Reported Speech

4 REPORTED SPEECH Who said what to whom?

By Gordon Smith-Duran • October 5, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! This week we are having a little break from the pronouns, although we will be coming back to them. In this Chalk and Talk session, requested by Pete Lovstrom, we will be looking

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4 PRONOUNS LE, LO, LA LightSpeed Spanish

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 30, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! This week we are dealing with a subject that a lot of Socios have requested and that is the Direct and Indirect Pronouns. A tricky subject for any non-native speaker, in this lesson

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4 PRONOUNS LE, LO, LA LightSpeed Spanish Read Post »

Ser Socio Chalk Talk Grammar

3 GRAMMAR Redundant use of the LE pronoun

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 29, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! In combination with this weeks lesson on Direct and Indirect objects pronouns (better known as LE, LO, LA etc.) we offer you a Chalk and Talk session on the way LE is used

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Ser Socio Chalk Talk

2 PRONUNCIATION with the Nose Rule

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 23, 2016

Hola, Socios. In this Chalk and Talk session we will be covering the importance of pronunciation in Spanish and offering you a simple system to help you understand where to place the emphasis or the

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Ser Socio Vocabulary

3 VOCABULARY La Policia y La Guardia Civil (Spanish Civil Guard)

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 23, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! This lesson is very much a ‘test your listening’ exercise as well as a vocabulary builder. (And a funny story at Gordon’s expense yet again.) Here we discuss the role of the Police

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3 VOCABULARY La Policia y La Guardia Civil (Spanish Civil Guard) Read Post »

Ser Socio Chalk Talk Prepositions

1 PREPOSITIONS The Personal A. When to use it.

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 13, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! Here you have first in the series of Chalk and Talk sessions that cover important parts of Spanish grammar. These sessions are designed for you and so please feel free to ask me

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Ser Socio Verbs

2 VERBS Understanding Ir + Venir and Llevar + Traer

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 3, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! (This is released a few hours earlier because Cynthia has just started to go into labour! Wish us luck!)

In this lesson we cover probably some of the more confusing verbs in Spanish. Confusing, that is, because in English we tend not to have any hard and fast rules about when we should use them. In Spanish, however, the rules are very fixed and if you break them, there will be confusion!

Here’s a sneak peek:

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2 VERBS Understanding Ir + Venir and Llevar + Traer Read Post »

Ser Socio Vocabulary

1 VOCABULARY Talking about Food in Spanish and Giving Compliments

By Gordon Smith-Duran • September 3, 2016

¡Hola, Socios! Welcome to the very first lesson in our membership program. Here we discuss the ways that you can talk about food and we especially focus on how to speak positively about what you are eating. This has always been an issue for students because they often don’t know which of “estar bien”, “estar buena”, and “ser buena” they should use.