Telling Time in Spanish

Minicourse

Telling Time by Listen, Read, Interact is a short, focused mini course designed to help you understand and use time expressions in Spanish accurately and confidently. Through examples, listening, and guided interaction, you will learn how Spanish speakers talk about time in everyday situations.

Course Format

  • 4 focused lessons
  • Clear, repeated examples of how time is expressed in Spanish
  • Normal-speed audio to train your ear
  • Interactive activities including matching, fill-in-the-blank, sentence building, and guided speaking

What You Will Learn

  • How to ask and answer ¿Qué hora es?
  • How to use son las and es la una correctly
  • How to express time of day: de la mañana, de la tarde, de la noche
  • How to talk about specific events using ¿A qué hora…?
  • How to use empieza, comienza, and termina with time expressions

Lesson Progression

Lesson 1: Telling the time using son las, es la una, and basic time expressions

Lesson 2: Special time expressions including mediodía, medianoche, and de madrugada

Lesson 3: Asking and answering ¿A qué hora…? with empieza, comienza, and termina

Lesson 4: Review and integration of all time expressions in context

How to Use This Course

  1. Complete the lessons in order. Each lesson builds on the previous one.
  2. Move slowly and deliberately. Accuracy matters more than speed.
  3. Listen and read multiple times before worrying about output.
  4. Use the interactive activities to check understanding.
  5. Answer the questions using complete sentences whenever possible.
  6. Revisit earlier lessons as needed. Repetition strengthens acquisition.

Why Time Matters in Spanish

Talking about time is one of the most common things we do in daily life. Classes start, meetings end, meals happen, and plans depend on the clock.

Spanish expresses time differently than English. This course is designed to help you notice those differences clearly and practice them in a controlled, meaningful way.

By the end of this course, you should feel comfortable understanding time expressions when you hear them and using them accurately when you speak and write.

Begin Lesson 1

For Spanish Instructors

This mini course is designed to be used both asynchronously by learners and synchronously in a classroom setting. Many sections are explicitly structured for teacher-led instruction.

  • Classroom Practice sections are meant to be projected and run live. Instructors can pause, elicit choral responses, and reveal model answers.
  • Examples progress from recognition to controlled production, allowing you to scaffold output naturally without forced explanation.
  • Activities work well for whole-class instruction, small-group practice, or quick daily warm-ups.
  • The course supports comprehension-based teaching while still giving students repeated, accurate models of form.
  • Lessons can be used as-is or easily adapted into standalone activities for A1 or early A2 classes.

Instructors are encouraged to slow the pace, repeat examples, and reuse sections across multiple days. This course is designed to reduce prep time while increasing meaningful exposure to time expressions in Spanish.