Family trip to the zoo

Lesson Overview: Family Trip to the Zoo

This lesson is designed for A2 Spanish learners to practice everyday vocabulary and simple grammar structures centered around a family visit to the zoo. The focus lies on using temporal adverbs like ya (already), todavía (still), and todavía no (not yet), which are commonly used to talk about actions or events and their completion status.

Key Themes and Content

• Planning a Family Visit: Practical dialogues about buying tickets, deciding visit times, and discussing animals to see first. Examples include sentences like "¿Ya compraste las entradas para el zoológico?" and "Todavía no hemos decidido a qué hora salimos."
• Describing Animals and Landscapes: Using vocabulary related to animals and environments, such as tigre (tiger), elefante (elephant), selva (jungle), and descriptive terms like enorme (huge) and arrugada (wrinkled). These descriptions naturally incorporate the temporal words to express experience or observation stages.
• Talking About Famous Zoos in Spain: Conversations mentioning well-known zoological parks to help learners build cultural awareness and vocabulary, including names like Zoo de Barcelona and Parque Faunia. This section also practices organizing visits with friends or family.

Grammar Focus: Usage of "ya," "todavía," and "todavía no"

These words are used to express timing and completeness in Spanish actions:

• Ya indicates that something has already happened or been completed. Example: "Ya las compré para el sábado." (I already bought them for Saturday.)
• Todavía means something is still ongoing or continuing. Example: "Todavía podemos ver muchos pájaros." (We can still see many birds.)
• Todavía no shows that something has not happened yet but is expected. Example: "Todavía no hemos decidido a qué hora salir." (We haven't decided what time to leave yet.)

Useful Vocabulary and Expressions

• Animals: tigre (tiger), elefante (elephant), panda (panda), búho (owl), mono (monkey), lagarto (lizard).
• Nature and landscapes: desierto (desert), selva (jungle), paisaje (landscape), área (area), hábitat natural (natural habitat).
• Common verbs and phrases: comprar entradas (buy tickets), organizar una visita (organize a visit), describir (describe), mirar (look/watch), esperar (hope, expect), planear (plan).

Comparison and Useful Notes for English Speakers

In Spanish, adverbs like ya, todavía, and todavía no add nuance to the timing of actions similarly to English "already," "still," and "not yet." However, they often appear before the verb and within perfect tenses, which differ from English syntax. For example, "Ya hemos comprado" translates as "We have already bought," keeping the adverb close to the verb.

Useful phrases include:

• ¿Ya compraste las entradas? — Have you already bought the tickets?
• Todavía no hemos visto al tigre. — We haven't seen the tiger yet.
• Todavía podemos visitar el parque. — We can still visit the park.

This lesson encourages active use of these temporal expressions within natural contexts such as planning trips, describing experiences, and talking about familiar places, supporting learners to improve both comprehension and expression in everyday Spanish.