Classroom instructions in Spanish: teacher commands and pupil phrases

One pupil or the whole class?

Spanish instructions change with the person you speak to. This is the first choice to make, and the one textbooks sometimes blur.

1. One pupil: tú. Escucha. Abre el libro. Siéntate.
2. The whole class in Spain: vosotros. Escuchad. Abrid el libro. Sentaos.
3. The whole class in Latin America: ustedes. Escuchen. Abran el libro. Siéntense. This form is also used in the Canary Islands and parts of Andalusia.

Choose the variety your scheme of work teaches and stick to it in your instructions; you can mention the other form when it comes up. Most UK textbooks teach Castilian Spanish, with vosotros.

Teacher instructions

For exercises, the same verbs come back: completad (fill in), unid (match), subrayad (underline), contestad a las preguntas (answer the questions), traducid (translate).

And for feedback: ¡Muy bien!, ¡Excelente!, ¡Casi! (nearly), Otra vez (again), Más alto (louder), ¡Venga! (come on, in Spain).

How the imperative works

1. Tú: the present tense minus the s. escuchas → escucha, lees → lee, repites → repite. Stem changes stay: cierra, repite.
2. Eight irregular tú forms. ven (come), di (say), haz (do), pon (put), sal (go out), ten (have), ve (go), sé (be).
3. Vosotros: the infinitive with d instead of r. escuchar → escuchad, leer → leed, abrir → abrid. No exceptions.
4. Reflexive vosotros forms lose the d. sentad + os → sentaos; levantaos, callaos. The colloquial form “sentaros” is very common in Spain but is not standard. The one exception, idos (go away), is rarely needed in class.
5. Ustedes: the present subjunctive. escuchen, abran, saquen, vengan.
6. Pronouns attach to positive commands. siéntate, ábrelo: note the written accent that keeps the stress in place.
7. Negative commands use the subjunctive. No hables. No habléis. No hablen. (“Don’t talk.”)

You don’t need to teach all of this at KS2 or early KS3. Pupils can learn the classroom commands as fixed phrases first and discover the pattern later, when the imperative comes up in the course.

Pupil phrases

Regional notes: in Spain you also hear ¿Puedo ir al servicio?. He terminado is the usual form in Spain, Terminé in most of Latin America. A pen is un boli (from bolígrafo) in Spain, una pluma in Mexico and una lapicera in Argentina.

Tú or usted to the teacher?

¿Puede repetir? uses usted; ¿Puedes repetir? uses tú. In Spain, many secondary pupils address their teachers as tú and by first name or as profe; in much of Latin America pupils use usted. In a UK classroom, Señor, Señora or Señorita with a surname is a UK convention rather than a Spanish one, but it works well: just make pupils use the verb form you have chosen consistently.

Typical mistakes of English-speaking learners

• Tú forms to the whole class: Escucha to thirty pupils. Use escuchad or escuchen.
• “Sentado” for “sit down”: sentado means “seated”. You will hear ¡Todos sentados! as a colloquial order, but the imperative is siéntate, sentaos or siéntense.
• Missing accents: siéntate, levántate, ¿Qué significa?
• Upside-down question marks forgotten: ¿Puedo ir al baño?
• “¿Puedo ir a el baño?”: a + el contracts to al.
• “¿Cómo se dice en español ruler?”: put the word before en español.
• Pronunciation: the final d of escuchad is soft and often barely heard; the j of trabajad is the throaty sound of “loch”.

In class: building a target-language classroom

Classroom language is the Spanish your pupils hear most often, so it pays to install it deliberately.

1. Start with ten to twelve core phrases: five instructions, five pupil requests. Display them on the wall with a picture for each.
2. Give each instruction a gesture: a hand behind the ear for escuchad, opening hands for abrid el libro.
3. Add one new phrase a week, and make it the phrase of the week.
4. Expect pupil requests in Spanish: ¿Puedo ir al baño? is the most motivating sentence in any language.
5. Hand over the role: a pupil gives the instructions at the start of the lesson, or leads a round of Simón dice.

Keep English for safeguarding, for anything that needs to be understood with certainty, and for short explanations when Spanish would only confuse. The aim is not an English-free lesson but a room where Spanish is the natural language of routine.

Adapting to your class

• A1Understand and follow ten instructions; ask to go to the toilet in Spanish.
• A2Use all the pupil phrases unprompted; add por favor and gracias every time.
• B1Give instructions to the class: a pupil runs the starter using vosotros or ustedes.
• B2Negotiate in Spanish: ¿Podríamos trabajar en grupos? ¿Nos puede dar más tiempo?

At KS2, the commands are best learnt through songs and games. At KS3, make pupil requests in Spanish a class expectation. At GCSE, classroom Spanish becomes the vehicle for discussing tasks, opinions and school itself.

Frequently asked questions