KS3 · Spanish · Year 8
Routines: personal 'a' and contraction 'al'
Relationships and daily life: personal 'a', pronouns
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/10
Your learning goal
I know how to use personal 'a' with the contraction 'al' and a range of adjectives, to understand and describe routine activities.
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Routines: personal 'a' and contraction 'al': slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I know how to use personal 'a' with the contraction 'al' and a range of adjectives, to understand and describe routine activities.
Key learning points
- In Spanish we use a personal 'a' between the verb and the direct object if the object is a specific person or pet.
- The article 'el' ('the') refers to a singular masculine noun. If personal 'a' is followed by 'el', it becomes 'al'.
- Some adjectives come before the noun in Spanish, these are called prenominal adjectives, e.g. 'mismo', 'propio'.
- Certain prenominal adjectives, 'bueno', 'primero', 'tercero' and 'malo', lose their -o ending before a masculine noun.
- These adjectives may appear in sentences with personal 'a' or 'al', e.g. 'conoces a un buen doctor'.
Words to know
- personal 'a'
- preposition placed before a direct object when that object is a specific person or pet
- al
- contraction of the preposition 'a' with the article 'el'
- prenominal adjectives
- adjective that goes before the noun
Common mistakes
All prenominal adjectives ending in -o drop the -o before masculine nouns.
Not all prenominal adjectives ending in -o drop it before a masculine noun, although there are many common ones that do like 'bueno' and 'malo'. However 'segundo' and 'último' do not, and there are others that hold on to their -o too.
For parents, carers and teachers
- For some learners 'human sentences' may help to illustrate grammar. You assign keywords to different pupils who come to the front of the class to translate simple sentences. With the 'a' + 'el' = 'al' rule, 'a' and 'el' will have to sit down to be replaced by 'al' for certain sentences.