Teacher guide

Students can greet someone and ask simple questions using vos instead of tú.

1. Warm up: play three greetings from the Phrasebook and ask students what sounds different from textbook Spanish.
2. Show the pattern: take the tú form, drop the final i or s, stress the last syllable. Tienes becomes tenés, quieres becomes querés.
3. Drill in pairs: student A asks ¿cómo estás?, ¿de dónde sos?, ¿querés un café?, student B answers.
4. Wrap up: each student writes one question with vos and asks it to a classmate.

Students can order coffee, medialunas and the bill using local words.

1. Teach the set: café, cortado, medialuna, la cuenta, mozo.
2. Model the exchange: Buenas, un cortado y dos medialunas, por favor. Then ¿me traés la cuenta?
3. Role play in pairs: one student is the mozo, one is the customer, then swap.
4. Local twist: point out that porteños say buenas instead of buenos días, and that the bill is la cuenta, never la nota.

Students recognize five common lunfardo words and know when to use them.

1. Write che, laburo, guita, quilombo and posta on the board and let students guess the meanings.
2. Tell the origin stories from the Culture page: Italian lavoro became laburo, vesre turned café into feca.
3. Match game: students pair each word with a situation, for example quilombo with a traffic jam.
4. Register talk: which of these are fine with a teacher, and which only with friends? (Quilombo is friends only.)

Students can ask for directions and talk about transport with porteño vocabulary.

1. Teach the set: colectivo, bondi, subte, vereda, bajar.
2. Practice the bus ritual: ¿bajan? to ask people to move, and asking the driver ¿me dejás en la próxima?
3. Map task: in pairs, students give each other directions across Buenos Aires using the new words.
4. Exit ticket: each student records one sentence about how they get to school, using at least one local word.

Students discuss Argentine customs and compare them with their own, in Spanish.

1. Read the customs section of the Culture page together: el beso, mate, la sobremesa.
2. Comprehension check: why does saying gracias end your turn in the mate round?
3. Discussion in small groups: which custom would be hardest to adopt at home, and why?
4. Writing: a short paragraph inviting a friend to share mate, using vos throughout.

Teach vos from day one

If your students are headed to Buenos Aires, vos is not an advanced topic. It is the default. Introduce it alongside tú so nothing sounds strange later.

Mark the register

Lunfardo is friendly, not universal. Teach students which words are fine anywhere (che, dale) and which stay among friends (quilombo, boludo).

Use the Vocabulary page as homework

Assign a category per week and let students listen to the pronunciation buttons. The voice prefers an Argentine accent when the browser has one.