Description
Ayer en la empresa is a comprehensive 10-page Spanish lesson designed for adult learners working in legal and business environments. At A1 level, it introduces and develops the use of the pretérito indefinido through illustrated workplace situations, professional conversations and practical language activities.
The lesson follows a workplace story involving a damaged delivery, a contract review, communication with a supplier and the resolution of a commercial problem. Students learn to describe completed past events, ask questions about what happened and explain a sequence of actions in Spanish.
What is included?
1. Illustrated vocabulary and comic activities
The lesson begins with a six-panel comic showing everyday professional situations, including receiving damaged goods, reviewing a contract, calling a supplier, negotiating a solution and signing an agreement.
Students match actions to pictures and practise essential business vocabulary.
2. Asking and answering questions about the past
Students practise questions with qué, cuándo, dónde, por qué and a quién, using short professional dialogues and listening activities.
3. Grammar: The pretérito indefinido
Structured exercises introduce regular verbs ending in ar, er and ir, followed by irregular forms such as tener, hacer, venir, estar, poder, poner, decir, ser and ir.
Further activities cover spelling changes, irregular verb stems and frequently used past tense forms.
4. Reading comprehension: A lawyer’s professional career
Students read a fictional biography of a Colombian lawyer and complete exercises involving verb conjugation, true or false statements and comprehension questions.
5. Describing a workplace incident
Students return to the illustrated story and reconstruct the sequence of events using the pretérito indefinido and expressions such as primero, después, a continuación and al día siguiente.
6. Listening and professional communication
Listening activities focus on workplace conversations, deliveries, supplier communication and resolving problems.
Students also practise interviewing a colleague, exchanging professional messages and performing a guided role play between a client and a lawyer.
7. Grammar appendix
Two pages of detailed grammatical explanations cover:
- Uses of the pretérito indefinido and time expressions
- Regular and irregular conjugations
- Spelling changes and stem changes
- The verbs ser and ir
- Sequencing past events and expressing duration
- Pronouns and common mistakes
8. Additional exercises
Eight sets of supplementary exercises reinforce conjugation, spelling changes, time expressions, sentence correction and written production.
9. Complete answer key and listening transcripts
The resource includes solutions to the activities and transcripts of the listening exercises, making it suitable for guided lessons and independent revision.
Resource details
- Level: A1
- Format: PDF
- Length: 10 pages
- Grammar: Pretérito indefinido
- Skills: Vocabulary, reading, listening, grammar, speaking and writing
- Audience: Adult Spanish learners, lawyers and business professionals
Internet connection required: The lesson includes external audio links for listening and pronunciation activities. An internet connection is necessary to access these recordings.
This resource is intended exclusively for Spanish language teaching and learning. The professional scenarios are educational examples and do not constitute legal or business advice.
