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

  • 9 short, 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

  • Tell time in Spanish with whole hours and minutes
  • Use es la una correctly for one o'clock
  • Use y, y cuarto, y media, and menos
  • Recognize Latin American para and faltan expressions like Son veinte para las dos and Faltan veinte para las dos
  • Understand day parts like morning, afternoon, night, and early morning
  • Say when events happen using a la una and a las dos

Lesson Progression

Lesson 1: Whole hours with son las

Lesson 2: The one-o'clock exception with es la una

Lesson 3: Minutes after the hour with y cinco, y diez, y veinte, and y veinticinco

Lesson 4: Common chunks: y cuarto and y media

Lesson 5: Day parts and special times: mañana, tarde, noche, madrugada, mediodía, and medianoche

Lesson 6: Minutes before the hour with menos

Lesson 7: Latin American para and faltan patterns for times before the next hour

Lesson 8: Events and schedules with ¿A qué hora...?

Lesson 9: Mixed review and communicative practice

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 the Intro Lesson

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.