A Primer of Pastoral Spanish

Book excerpt: A Primer of Pastoral Spanish is designed to provide religious and non-religious alike with the linguistic and cultural tools to minister in Spanish. This primer is modeled after Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish (1953), whose author, Margarita Madrigal, bases her methodology on creating with the language instead of memorizing it. Previous knowledge of Spanish is not necessary, although, as you will discover, you already know thousands of words in Spanish. The vocabulary you know in English is the foundation on which you can build your knowledge of Spanish vocabulary. There are thousands of English words that become Spanish words if you can recognize the slight change that takes place from one language to the other. For example, you will learn how to conjugate a verb in Spanish to the first-person singular of the past tense by dropping a letter from its translation in English and adding an accent. There are 40 units in this primer. If you were to study each unit 20-30 minutes a day throughout Lent, for example, think about how far you could progress. Each unit consists of four sections: Vocabulary, Prayer or Culture, Cornerstones, and Vocabulary Review. There are four units called Check Your Progress. These units consist of Challenges based on the grammar, vocabulary, and culture you learned in the previous units. The answers to the Challenges are at the end of the units.