Read the following letter from an American student to a new Spanish speaking pen pal. Can you find and correct the mistakes? The
errors may be anything, missing/extra words, misspellings, no accents, wrong verb form, wrong gender, etc. Write the corrections in the space above the error. There are at least 20 errors. Find them all. Ronaldo,
¡Hola! Me llamo es Sergio. ¿Qué tal? Soy fantástico. Soy altos, guapo, moreno, y flaca. Yo no es bajo, feo, o gorrdo.
Soy Chicago. Soy americana. ¿De dónde eres tú? ¿De qué nacionalidad somos tú? ¿Eres alumna en unas colegio?
Soy una alumno en el Colegio de George Washington. Soy un alumno buena. ¡No soy perezoso de ninguna manera! Soy muy ambiciososo. Mi amiga Claudia es alumna en una escuela secundario. Ellas es bastante timido, pero (but) es simpatica. Somos amigas buenos. Somos hnestos y generoso.
(I'm rewriting the whole letter to avoid confusion)
Corrections: Ronaldo, ¡Hola! Me llamo Sergio. ¿Qué tal? Estoy fantástico. Soy alto, guapo, moreno, y flaco. Yo no soy ni bajo, ni feo, ni gordo. Soy de Chicago. Soy americano. ¿De dónde eres tú? ¿De qué nacionalidad eres tú? ¿Eres un alumno en un colegio? Soy un alumno en el Colegio de George Washington. Soy un alumno bueno. ¡No soy perezoso de ninguna manera! Soy muy ambicioso. Mi amiga Claudia es una alumna en una escuela secundaria. Ella es bastante tímida, pero (but) es simpatica. Somos amigos buenos. Somos honestos y generosos.
¡Adiós amigo! Sergio
Explanation (and some jokes made at poor Sergio's expense):
"Me llamo es" is incorrect because "me llamo" means "I am called," so the "es" is unnecessary.
"Soy" is a word for a continuous/permanent state of being. Estoy is the word generally used for feelings because today you may feel fantastic, but tomorrow you could feel terrible. Estoy is for an impermanent, non-lasting state of being (different when used in other situations. If confused about this, you should talk to your teacher about the difference between soy and estoy)
"Altos" is plural, but Sergio is only talking about ONE PERSON, himself, so the word used should be alto.
"Flaca" is feminine, while Sergio, going by name alone and the usage of mostly male pronouns, is a male. so, just switch the "a" for an "o" and, in most situations, unless you have a word like día, you should be correct.
"Es" is the 'el/ella' (he/she) conjugation of the verb 'ser'. In this situation, you want the 'yo' (I) conjugation, 'soy'.
When listing 3 or more things you AREN'T (or someone/thing else isn't), you should connect the words using "ni". Ni has no direct translation, but it's one of those things that is lost in translation, but is still important.
Gordo is a word for overwheight, spelled with only one 'r'. If it were spelled with two, it would have a different pronunciation and all.
No, unfortunately, you aren't Chicago, Sergio. Sad to have to break it to you, but you are FROM Chicago. De is the Spanish word for of/from/probably-something-else-that-I-can't-remember, and in order to avoid having people think you are the state that Quiz Bowl nationals are held in (sorry, I'm a nerd), you need to use it. (I know Sergio isn't a real person. I'm just being mildly sarcastic)
Americana is feminine.
The correct conjugation of ser in this case is "eres".
"Un" is the (masculine) word for "a"
alumna is feminine
unas is both feminine and plural... Very problematic in this case because the word colegio is masculine and singular... Sergio is not good at Spanish...
una is feminine... Dang, Sergio, how many times must we do this?
buana... is feminine, Sergio...
I'm not sure if the sentence "No soy perezoso de ninguna manera!" is correct or not. I think it means I am not lazy in any manner/way, but I haven't seen the words ninguna or manera before, so that's something you'll have to look into (unless you already know).
Yeah, I think for ambiciososo, there's just an extra "so" in there... Not sure where it came from, but it definitely needed to be fixed.
I just added an "una" before alumna. I'm not sure if the uns and unas are necessary in this case, but I think that they are correct, so I'm adding them in just in case.
The whole feminine/masculine thing has been overdone now. My poor little brain is TIRED OF IT, SERGIO!
"Ellas" is plural, Claudia is one person.
I don't know if your teacher is a stickler for accents marks(?) so I put one in just in case.
Feminine masculine error again... If Sergio were to become a real person, I might be just about ready to murder them...
Honestos is the correctly spelled version of that word up there, the one without the vowel between the two consonants. Yeah, that one... the one that sounds like the plural form of nests. This is why we can't have nice things, Sergio.
Anyway, cr*ppy jokes, and probably equally as bad explanations, aside I hope this was helpful, and not too long and boring... :)
