My child did well in Spanish I but is struggling now — what changed?

Spanish II usually introduces the preterite tense and object pronouns within the first few months. Both require holding several rules in mind at once rather than substituting vocabulary into a fixed pattern, and students who succeeded by memorising in year one often hit a wall here. Targeted practice on those two areas normally resolves it.

Can Evelyn help with speaking and pronunciation, or just grammar?

Sessions are voice-based, so the student speaks Spanish aloud and gets feedback on pronunciation, verb endings and hesitation. This is useful preparation for oral presentations and speaking assessments, which many Spanish II classes weight heavily.

How do you handle preterite versus imperfect?

By narrating. Isolated fill-in-the-blank drills tend not to transfer, so Evelyn has students tell short stories where both tenses appear together, then talks through why each verb took the tense it did.

Does it matter which textbook or program the school uses?

No. The sequence of Spanish II topics is broadly similar across programs, and specific chapters, vocabulary lists or worksheets can be brought into a session and worked through.

Spanish II

Middle School (6-8) · World Languages

Spanish II picks up where a first year of Spanish leaves off: the present tense is assumed, and the work shifts to talking about the past, replacing nouns with pronouns, and describing daily routines. Most middle school Spanish II courses spend a large share of the year on the preterite tense and on object pronouns, which are the two places students most often stall. Sessions are spoken aloud with Evelyn, so conjugations get practised in conversation rather than only on a worksheet, and students hear their own pronunciation corrected as they go.

Start a session on Spanish II

What this covers

Regular preterite endings for -ar, -er and -ir verbs, plus the high-frequency irregulars (ir, ser, hacer, tener, estar, poder, decir)
The imperfect tense and choosing between preterite and imperfect when narrating a story or describing what things used to be like
Reflexive verbs and pronouns for daily routine (levantarse, ducharse, vestirse, acostarse), including where the pronoun sits with infinitives
Direct and indirect object pronouns — lo, la, los, las, me, te, le, nos, les — and combining them (se lo dije)
Stem-changing verbs in the present and their behaviour in the preterite (pedir, dormir, servir)
Comparisons and superlatives (más… que, menos… que, tan… como, el mejor), plus affirmative tú commands and informal instructions

Where learners get stuck

Treating preterite and imperfect as two words for 'past' and picking whichever sounds nicer: English uses one simple past for both ('I ate' covers 'comí' and 'comía'), so there is no native instinct to fall back on. Students need a working rule — completed event versus ongoing background, description or habit — and repeated practice narrating short stories where both appear in the same sentence.
Putting object pronouns after the verb, English-style: 'veo lo' instead of 'lo veo': Word order in English is fixed subject-verb-object, so 'I see it' maps straight onto the wrong Spanish order. The rule also has exceptions (attached to infinitives and affirmative commands: verlo, dímelo), which makes the pattern feel inconsistent until it is drilled in speech.
Dropping the reflexive pronoun or freezing it as 'se' for every subject: Students memorise the infinitive as 'levantarse' and carry the -se over unchanged, producing 'yo se levanto'. The pronoun has to shift with the subject (me levanto, te levantas), which is an extra agreement step that first-year Spanish never asked for.

What a session looks like

A session usually opens with a short spoken warm-up in Spanish about the student's day or weekend, which naturally pulls in reflexive verbs and past tense. Evelyn then works through the target structure — say, preterite of irregular verbs — with guided examples, has the student build sentences aloud, and corrects errors as they happen rather than at the end. Sessions often finish with a short retell task (describe what happened in a scene or a weekend) so the grammar is used in connected speech. Homework problems, textbook chapters or upcoming quiz topics can be brought in and worked through directly.

Helpful to know first

Comfortable conjugating regular -ar, -er and -ir verbs in the present tense
Knows ser, estar, tener, ir and hacer in the present
Understands noun gender, plurals and adjective agreement
Around a year of Spanish vocabulary: family, school, food, time, weather, numbers

Questions

My child did well in Spanish I but is struggling now — what changed?: Spanish II usually introduces the preterite tense and object pronouns within the first few months. Both require holding several rules in mind at once rather than substituting vocabulary into a fixed pattern, and students who succeeded by memorising in year one often hit a wall here. Targeted practice on those two areas normally resolves it.
Can Evelyn help with speaking and pronunciation, or just grammar?: Sessions are voice-based, so the student speaks Spanish aloud and gets feedback on pronunciation, verb endings and hesitation. This is useful preparation for oral presentations and speaking assessments, which many Spanish II classes weight heavily.
How do you handle preterite versus imperfect?: By narrating. Isolated fill-in-the-blank drills tend not to transfer, so Evelyn has students tell short stories where both tenses appear together, then talks through why each verb took the tense it did.
Does it matter which textbook or program the school uses?: No. The sequence of Spanish II topics is broadly similar across programs, and specific chapters, vocabulary lists or worksheets can be brought into a session and worked through.