Spanish Midterm Study Help

[SeniorStatus14]

So every year since Spanish 3 (I'm in Spanish 5 now) our spanish midterm is to read the 4 spanish texts (A,B,C,D) and answer the questions that follow them. They are usually old IB SL spanish tests and I ALWAYS fail them. I don't think I've ever gotten above a D.

I just don't understand how to study for this test! I can't study grammar because it's not even going to be tested, and I can't study vocab because I don't know what vocab to study.

How do you study for tests like these?

[Emmi]

We had to do these in my school too, as midterms and occasionally just one of the texts (A, B, C, or D) for a homework assignment. There isn't really a "set" way to study for them so they can really be about anything. Having a wide range of vocabulary helps, but you can't be prepared for everything.

There are a few hints that my teachers pointed out that can help when answering questions:

1. When you have a section in one of your texts (for example, questions where you have to find a sentence that means what the example is giving), the answers are in order in the text. The correct answer to the first question is ALWAYS (or at least 99/100 times) before the correct answer to the second question, so you can use that to narrow down what the possible answers to a question might be. If you know Question 2 is correct then you can focus on the text after where you found that answer to find the answer to question 3. Usually they will tell you which paragraphs to look at for the answers, so just read those.

2. Sometimes there is a section on "fill in the correct preposition" or whatever for a given paragraph. Know your prepositions.

3. Use context clues to figure out words you don't know. What is the article about? What do the words surrounding the mystery word mean, or how is that sentence constructed? Use that to take a guess. Sometimes you don't even need to know every single word in the text to answer the questions.

4. You often need to write out quite a bit from the text to answer the question, but you only need to include the stuff related to the question. Sometimes you won't be given marks for a really long, wordy answer (i.e. they only wanted the phrase "fue al campo" but you included the entire sentence it was in) because it doesn't demonstrate you know what the question is asking and what the answer to it is.

Good luck, and with practice you can easily do better.

[SeniorStatus14]

We had to do these in my school too, as midterms and occasionally just one of the texts (A, B, C, or D) for a homework assignment. There isn't really a "set" way to study for them so they can really be about anything. Having a wide range of vocabulary helps, but you can't be prepared for everything.

There are a few hints that my teachers pointed out that can help when answering questions:

1. When you have a section in one of your texts (for example, questions where you have to find a sentence that means what the example is giving), the answers are in order in the text. The correct answer to the first question is ALWAYS (or at least 99/100 times) before the correct answer to the second question, so you can use that to narrow down what the possible answers to a question might be. If you know Question 2 is correct then you can focus on the text after where you found that answer to find the answer to question 3. Usually they will tell you which paragraphs to look at for the answers, so just read those.

2. Sometimes there is a section on "fill in the correct preposition" or whatever for a given paragraph. Know your prepositions.

3. Use context clues to figure out words you don't know. What is the article about? What do the words surrounding the mystery word mean, or how is that sentence constructed? Use that to take a guess. Sometimes you don't even need to know every single word in the text to answer the questions.

4. You often need to write out quite a bit from the text to answer the question, but you only need to include the stuff related to the question. Sometimes you won't be given marks for a really long, wordy answer (i.e. they only wanted the phrase "fue al campo" but you included the entire sentence it was in) because it doesn't demonstrate you know what the question is asking and what the answer to it is.

Good luck, and with practice you can easily do better.

Thank you!! I always have issues with the prepositions and the one where you have to find synonyms of the words. Those are good tips!