Spanish Classroom Questions and Phrases

¿Puede repetir por favor? This is a very common classroom question for any level. In this lesson, you will learn how to ask your teacher basic things using Spanish classroom questions and also how to use some important expressions such as “Disculpe”(excuse me) that will certainly help you in class and real life situations. Let’s begin…

Introductory video: 10 Basic Questions to Learn Spanish

Firstly, we will ask you to spend a few minutes watching this video. It presents ten Spanish questions that are very useful in the classroom in a clear and simple way. Remember that you can activate the subtitles if you need them.

A Few Useful Spanish Classroom Phrases – Expresiones del aula

There are many expressions in the language that can be very useful in class. Some of them are single words and others phrases such as “No sé” (I don’t know). “No sé” could be a proper answer when someone asks “¿Sabes cuál es la tarea?”(do you know what the homework is?) or for “¿Cómo se deletrea esa palabra?” and you do not know. A few other important Spanish classroom phrases are “No entiendo” (I don’t understand) and “Repita por favor” (please repeat). Read and listen to more expressions for the Spanish class in the chart below:

Common Spanish classroom questions – Preguntas del aula

Most Spanish classroom questions, “las preguntas de la clase”, follow the same rules for any other question in the language. First, they need a question mark at the beginning and one at the end. The intonation of your question should change a bit depending on what you mean to ask. Some new verbs you will often find in Spanish classroom questions are: EXPLICAR (to explain), REPETIR (to repeat), DECIR (to say), PRONUNCIAR (to pronounce), SIGNIFICAR (to mean) and PODER (can, be able to).

“Explicar, hablar, significar, pronunciar” are regular verbs so you only need to learn a few rules to conjugate them. On the other hand, the verbs “repetir, poder, decir” are irregular verbs, which means they vary their stem with some pronouns. Know that questions beginning with the verb PODER are requests, a topic that is explained with more details in a different lesson.

Listening to a list of basic Spanish classroom questions

Listening Activity No. 1: Asking questions in the Spanish Class

Key expressions in the conversation:

• Hoy vamos a aprender… means “Today we are going to learn…”
• Disculpe maestra… means “Excuse me teacher”

Practice: A few more verbs for the classroom in Spanish + quiz

There are many other important verbs you could use in the Spanish class including DELETREAR (spell), HACER (do), DIBUJAR (draw), COMENZAR (begin) and TERMINAR (finish). The key is conjugating the verbs correctly and knowing when they will be accompanied by a reflexive pronoun, as it is the case for DECIR, which will be used as “SE DICE”. Right now, try to memorize Spanish classroom phrases and questions presented above and work on the grammar behind them in future lessons.