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How to Write an Amazing Essay in Spanish

Has your teacher asked you to write an essay in Spanish? Essays are probably the most common type of homework around the world. Teachers want you to write essays because they’re a way to improve your abilities when you’re learning a new language. 

Writing essays may not seem like fun, but it actually improves your cognitive abilities! The act of researching, organizing, and writing pushes you to increase your knowledge on different topics, strengthens your critical thinking skills, and advances your ability to communicate and express your thoughts.

With all these benefits in mind, it’s no wonder you want to write a great essay in Spanish. But there are times when your ideas vanish and your mind goes blank—you wonder, where do I begin and what steps do I follow? 

Even if you’re a pro when it comes to writing in English, writing an essay in Spanish can be a challenge. In this blog post, I’ll help you overcome this small hurdle to help you make your Spanish essay cohesive, persuasive, and as professional as possible.

Are you ready to write an amazing essay in Spanish?

Basics and Benefits of Writing Essays

Strong writing skills are important for school, college, and a professional career. It’s likely that Spanish is not your first language, but if you’re learning the language then writing a research-fueled Spanish essay gives you all sorts of advantages. It enables you to practice grammar, spelling, vocabulary, as well as synthesize your ideas and thoughts surrounding the topic you’re writing about.

Writing a terrific essay in Spanish requires planning, organization, and structure. Having a process saves you time and once you’ve established a system that works for you, the writing comes easy! 

How to Structure an Essay in Spanish

Similar to when you’re telling a story, your essay should follow a traditional story arc. This means that you start with an appealing introduction, after which you develop your idea within the body of the essay, and finally, you close your thoughts or argument with a summary and conclusion. 

Let’s take a deeper look at these 3 parts of an essay in Spanish:

1. Introduction

Start your essay with a summary of the topic you’ll cover throughout your piece. The introduction reflects the argumentative line that your whole essay follows. It should be brief but not too short. I recommend making the intro 10% of your whole essay. 

A good introduction gives enough information by stating a problem or the reason why you’re writing the essay and why the reader should be compelled to read it. 

Some writers choose to write the introduction after they’ve written the body and conclusion. I think it’s a good strategy that allows you to summarize and evaluate the body of your whole essay before you aim to highlight important points in your introduction. 

My biggest advice is to make it clear what the reason for your essay’s existence is, so that your reader can feel excited to know more, and invited to learn from you. 

This is the main part of your essay. I recommend that you dedicate 80% of your whole essay to the body. This critical section develops the core ideas of your essay in Spanish as it’s where you present the main ideas and their arguments in relation to the topic you’re writing about. 

This part requires you to do research from reputable sources, fact checking, and tying all your ideas together in a cohesive way. 

3. Conclusion

The remaining 10% of your essay in Spanish should focus on bringing the essay to a close. You want to summarize all the main ideas of your topic and establish your final posture on it. 

Preferably, leave no loose ends and make sure the ending of your essay has the ability to create a discussion or invite the reader to find out more about the topic. 

Steps to Follow to Write an Essay in Spanish

Every writer has a unique system that works for them. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. 

The steps and path you follow for writing an essay in Spanish depend on the knowledge and fluency you have of the language as well as your familiarity with writing. 

Nevertheless, I recommend some basic steps that will help you if you’re a beginner when it comes to writing an essay in Spanish. 

1. Define a Topic

Choose a topic of interest to you. If the topic is not assigned by your teacher, go for a current issue or interesting topic that will inspire you to research as much as possible. Check the local media, or go online and find out what topics are available for you to discuss.

2. Do Your Research

This aspect is critical—you must find reliable sources of information for your essay. Go to a library if possible, find academic papers online, and gather as much documentation as possible that helps you understand the central themes and patterns of your chosen topic.

As a plus, if you do your research in Spanish, you’ll see other essays in Spanish that will help you develop your own Spanish writing style, tone, and personality.  

3. Determine Your Position

After you’ve gathered enough research, you’ll begin to see an angle or position you can take in relation to the information. The angle or position you take is essentially your “point.” Ask yourself, “What’s my point in writing this?” When you’ve answered that, you’ve discovered your position. 

To support your position, your research should include quotes, statistics, and any relevant information you can find from credible sources. 

4. Draft an Outline

This step is vital for organizing your arguments and ideas. Since Spanish is not your first language, an outline will allow you to translate words or phrases. In addition to listing Spanish notes in your outline, keep this basic process in mind:

  • Know your audience
  • Gather all notes, research, and supporting materials
  • Organize them into a cohesive flow 
  • Be sure to organize by how each subtopic relates to the main topic and to each other

5. List Spanish Words and Terms

Since you’re writing an essay in Spanish, it’s only befitting that you have a list of specific words and terms you want to include in it. 

Draft a list of terms that are relevant to your essay in Spanish, whether they’re reminders in your outline or they’re unfamiliar terms that beg to be further researched. 

The terms you choose allow you to set a tone and define whether you’re using standard Spanish, informal Spanish, or literary and formal language. 

The tone you choose to follow in your essay guides your word choice. 

Here’s a list of words and phrases in Spanish that can help with your writing:

6. Write the Body of Your Essay

Focus on fully developing your argument with relevant examples and evidence to support your position. Each paragraph should focus on only one argument along with supporting evidence, and the flow from one paragraph to the next should sound natural and rational. 

Spanish is a richer language, so don’t be afraid of writing longer sentences than usual, but make sure you combine them with short dynamic phrases. It’s essential to keep your reader interested! 

7. Write an Engaging Introduction

Once you’re done with the body of your essay, start writing the introduction. The purpose of your intro is to set a tone and prepare the reader for what follows. 

Putting together your introduction at the end allows you to absorb what you’ve written and define how to present the topic and express your point. 

8. Summarize and Conclude

The conclusion is your essay is an opportunity to tie all your points together and restate the main argument. Since some essays are meant to be objective, I recommend you include a paragraph or sentence that stimulates reflection and enriches the reader’s perspective on the topic. 

9. Final Edits and Proofreading

This final step is the second most critical when it comes to writing an essay in Spanish! Edit for correcting typos, punctuation, grammatical errors, and spelling. 

I recommend you share your Spanish essay with a native speaker who can proofread it before you turn it in. Another person’s perspective can help you spot an error or a section that lacks cohesion. 

A Few Final Tips

Read your essay as many times as possible.

I find myself making changes to essays after reading them at least 4 or 5 times. You need to check your essay for: 

  • readability
  • consistency
  • transitions between paragraphs, 
  • unnecessary fillers, and 
  • adequate adverbs and adjectives.

Think and write in Spanish, if possible

By drafting an outline, doing your research, and organizing your ideas in Spanish from the beginning, you fully immerse yourself and make writing an essay in Spanish more efficient. 

On the contrary, by writing and researching in English with the goal of translating, you’ll end up in a tough spot with way much more work than intended. 

Ready to Write Your First Essay in Spanish?

I hope by sharing my essay-writing experience in this blog post that you feel more confident about writing your essay in Spanish. I know it can be frustrating and challenging at times, but don’t be afraid to make mistakes and correct them later. 

The truth is, the more comfortable you feel speaking Spanish, the more your writing skills in Spanish will improve. 

If you’re ready to take the next step and work on your speaking skills, join us at Homeschool Spanish Academy! You can sign up for a free trial class with one of our native, Spanish-speaking teachers. Before you know it, you’ll be speaking Spanish and writing essays like a pro!

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spanish essay on school

Ensayos Cortos

Essays in Spanish

In our site we have over 150 essays in Spanish (full and free) that you can check to inspire yourself for your homework or assignments and use them as example essays.

Our essays are simple and short, so they are really good for Spanish classes for students that speak English as a native language. They can be good for middle school, high school, college, or any language learning classes.

Each essay is written around a topic that it’s included in the title. You can check our homepage to find our latest essays published, or use our search form in the right sidebar (you should use keywords or topics in Spanish).

For an easy start, here we include some of the essays in Spanish but with the title (topic) translated to English so you can find a match for your interest.

List of essays in Spanish

  • Example essay about  family in Spanish
  • Example essay about  discrimination in Spanish
  • Example essay about  violence in Spanish
  • Example essay about  what is life in Spanish
  • Example essay about  peace in Spanish
  • Example essay about  global warming in Spanish
  • Example essay about  myself and my life in Spanish
  • Example essay about  Mexico in Spanish
  • Example essay about  Donald Trump in Spanish
  • Example essay about  corruption in Spanish
  • Example essay about  innovation  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  Aristotle  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  homosexuality  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  smoking  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  sports  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  life projects  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  technology  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  love  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  racism  in Spanish
  • Example essay about  bullying  in Spanish

Please use the comments area below in this post if you can’t find the essay you were looking for! – you can write in English if your Spanish isn’t the best 🙂

2 comentarios en «Essays in Spanish»

Odio la escuela

Aquí hay un ensayo escrito en español sobre el ataque del 11 de septiembre La mañana del 11 de septiembre de 2001 fue la mañana en que el mundo entero hizo una pausa y contuvo la respiración. Cada 11 de septiembre desde entonces, la gente de todas partes se detendrá para recordar. Esa fue la mañana en que terroristas de Arabia Saudita secuestraron cuatro aviones estadounidenses diferentes, pensando solo en la misión suicida que tenían por delante y en lo que tenían que hacer para llevarla a cabo. De alguna manera subieron a los aviones sin ser detectados y en algún momento del vuelo se revelaron.Se hicieron con el control del avión, amenazando a los pasajeros con una bomba. Sin embargo, lo que los pasajeros no sabían es que no había ninguna bomba. Los terroristas tenían planes diferentes para los aviones ese día. Su estrategia era estrellar los cuatro aviones contra diferentes edificios, matando a tantas personas como pudieran. El primer avión, el Vuelo 11 de American Airlines, se estrelló contra la torre norte del World Trade Center. Otro avión, el Vuelo 175, voló hacia la torre sur del World Trade Center y también estalló en llamas. El tercer avión secuestrado, el vuelo 77 de American Airlines, se estrelló contra el edificio del Pentágono.Mientras tanto, personas de todo el mundo miraban las noticias. Miles de personas sabían de este ataque, pero solo algunos podían ayudar. Otros solo podían ver las noticias y contener la respiración, esperando lo mejor. La mayoría de las personas intentaron llamar a sus familias y algunas de esas personas se pusieron en contacto con ellos. Algunas de esas personas estaban en el Vuelo 93. Juntos estaban tratando de averiguar qué estaba pasando. Alguien debe haber juntado las piezas y sabía que tenía que hacer algo. Varios pasajeros intentaron retomar el control del avión, pero solo provocaron que el secuestrador hiciera volar el último avión contra el suelo en Pensilvania. El resultado fue devastador. Las torres norte y sur del World Trade Center se derrumbaron y muchos bomberos arriesgaron sus propias vidas para intentar salvar a otras. Según el sitio web de la CNN, más de dos mil personas fueron gravementeheridos y casi tres mil personas perdieron la vida. La razón principal del ataque fue el intento de Al Qaeda de desestabilizar las economías occidentales. Tal vez también estaban tratando de enviar un mensaje sobre algo. Nueve años después del ataque, mi papá recuerda ver las noticias y ver los aviones golpeando los diferentes edificios y destruyendo tanto. También recuerda que muchas personas murieron en todos los accidentes. Cuando mi mamá piensa en el 11 de septiembre, recuerda que venía a recogernos a mi hermano y a mí de la escuela. Ella vino alrededor de las 11:30 a buscarnos porque solo nos quedamos la mitad del día en ese entonces. Mi mamá estaba haciendo mandados antes de eso y no había oído hablar del ataque. Luego se enteró de que también tenía que buscar a mi hermana, porque los dejaron salir temprano. Cuando llegamos a casa, mi mamá dice que encendió la televisión para tratar de averiguar qué había sucedido. Lo descubrió con bastante facilidad porque el ataque estaba en todas las noticias. Mi hermana, Emily, estaba en segundo grado cuando ocurrió el ataque. Ella recuerda que su clase estaba almorzando cuando los padres de todos llegaron y los llevaron a casa. También recuerda que todos los padresestaban asustados por algo, pero ella no sabía lo que había sucedido. Estaba en el jardín de infantes el 11 de septiembre y no recuerdo nada de ese día, aparte de lo que he escuchado desde entonces. Después de ver el video en clase, me di cuenta de la destrucción que realmente fue el ataque. Causó el colapso total de dos torres en el World Trade Center. Tantas personas estaban atrapado dentro de ambos edificios y casi ninguno logró salir. Los que lo hicieron definitivamente son extremadamente afortunados de estar vivos. Sin embargo, solo unas pocas personas en el primer piso lograron salir. No había esperanza para las personas en los pisos superiores, lo que empeoró este día. Desde el ataque de 2001, la economía nunca se ha recuperado por completo. El principal efecto económico a largo plazo del ataque fue la guerra en Irak. Nuestros soldados han estado allí durante nueve años y no se está volviendo más fácil para nadie. Enviamos más y más tropas para ayudar a luchar en la guerra, y la economía sigue siendo mala. Definitivamente también ha sido una lucha financiera para el gobierno. En mi opinión, nada bueno salió del 11 de septiembre. Comenzó otra guerra más para que nuestros soldados pelearan, y muchas personas ya han perdido la vida. Todos los años a partir de ahora todos se detendrán por un momento para pensar y lamentarse por el ataque del 11 de septiembre de 2001.

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Spanish to Go

Spanish to Go

Spanish Essay On School

Exploring the school experience: a spanish essay, un viaje educativo: a journey of learning, los desafíos académicos: academic challenges, la importancia de la comunidad escolar: school community, profesores: guiding lights, explorando pasiones: exploring passions, el futuro educacional: the educational future, el impacto duradero: enduring impact, el viaje continúa: the journey continues, en conclusión: a concluding thought.

2.65 Km In Miles

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Spanish Writer Freelance

Spanish essay example and how to write it.

Today, I will share a  Spanish essay example   in the end of the article and talk about the steps and hacks to help you craft the perfect Spanish essay.

As an experienced writer, I understand how hard it can be to write in a language different from your mother tongue. But, know that learning  how to write a good Spanish essay  has more to do with following a structure than it has to do with understanding the language.

Of course, you need to have a basic understanding of spelling and grammatical practices; as well as a vast vocabulary to avoid sounding monotonous. 

However, learning  how to write a Spanish essay  is not impossible if you follow these simple steps:

  • Draft an outline 
  • Create a list of words and terms 
  • Start writing the body of your essay
  • Write the introduction 
  • Formulate the conclusion 
  • Proofread and edit 

As you can see, learning how to write a good Spanish essay requires a lot of planning and organization. And although it might be counter-intuitive at first, following the structure above will save you a lot of time. Plus, once you have the system down, you will be able to create exciting pieces without breaking a sweat!

Before we dive in, I always recommend you do a little research. So, look up  Spanish essay examples  online and analyze the way the writer structured the piece. Bonus points if you can find useful examples of essays within your topic of choice. The idea is not to copy what others are saying but to understand  how to write a Spanish essay  that is well crafted, appealing, and informative — all at the same time. 

Now that you have done your homework; it is time to start writing your essay by following the steps I mentioned earlier:

1. Draft an outline

An outline is vital when you are learning  how to write a Spanish essay , as it will allow you to organize your arguments and ideas. Plus, given that you are not writing in your first language, an outline will help you translate keywords or phrases from English to Spanish (if need be).

As you can see from the Spanish essay example, I have shared it after the text . You must keep it simple. Nonetheless, make sure you have enough information to elaborate on 6-7 paragraphs. Also, do not forget to include any quotes, statistics, or other information (from credible sources) that could support your arguments.

2. Create a list of words and terms 

I always recommend that before you start writing, you create a list of keywords or phrases that are vital to your essay. More often than not, these terms will appear as part of your outline, but, in other instances, these could be hard-to-translate terms. 

You do not need to write every word or term you will be using throughout the piece as you can always use a English-Spanish dictionary if you cannot recall a specific term.

The list is a way of double-checking. keywords to make sure you are using the correct term in Spanish and not using a literal translation. For instance, in the list of our Spanish essay example, the word “ must-have ” is not translated to “ debes tener ,” as that would be a literal translation. Instead, the phrases “ cualidades indispensables ” is used, which would be the appropriate term in Spanish.  

3. Start writing the body of your essay

The body of the essay is where you fully develop your argument. It might seem odd, but you should ignore your essay’s introduction and go straight to the body . 

If your goal is to master  how to write a good Spanish essay  make sure your body has a good flow in between paragraphs, so they do not end up being separate mini-essays. It is also essential that each body paragraph contains only one main argument or claim. However, this central idea can (and should) be supported by approximately 5 to 6 other sentences.

Spanish essays are usually wordier/more complicated than your average English essay as the language is richer. So, do not be afraid to write longer sentences to get the message across.  

Lastly, do not forget to add relevant examples, evidence to support your arguments, and quotes from experts or credible sources (i.e., academic books and journal articles).   You can see one example of a quote here.

Let’s be honest, most students do not do that, but shows the teacher you have put effort to research your topic.

 Go back to our Spanish essay example and dissect each paragraph. Pay attention to the transitions here and here , the way we incorporated quotes, and how each paragraph’s main idea is developed. In doing so, you will be gaining valuable insight as to how to structure your document. 

4. Write the introduction 

Once you have finished writing your entire essay’s body, write the introduction. Why? Simple. If the job of an introduction is to set the tone for what will follow. You will have a more precise and more detailed idea of what that is once you’ve written the entire piece. 

An introduction should state a problem or introduce a subject of discussion. It should also tell the reader  why  you are writing this essay and why he/she should feel compelled to read it. 

Let’s look at our Spanish essay example. Here, the introduction , although it is short, gives us enough information. It allows us to understand that we will know how to manage a remote team by choosing the right candidates and establishing an effective strategy after reading this essay. And that is precisely what you want an introduction to be doing!  

5. Formulate the conclusion 

When learning  how to write a Spanish essay , you have to be really careful with how you formulate the conclusion. In Spanish, your conclusion should always begin by restating your main argument. In other words, this is your chance to tie all of your main points together and give the reader a succinct takeaway. 

For instance, in our Spanish essay example, the conclusion is everything. Think about it, if you only read the title and this last paragraph, you almost do not need to read the body. All the main points are there, and as a reader, I got what I came looking for: strategies to manage a remote team effectively. 

6. Proofread and edit 

To finish our easy steps on  how to write a Spanish essay,  we must not leave our editing and proofreading! This step is critical to composing a great essay. Most readers will not even finish reading articles if they spot a spelling mistake, typo, or grammatical error. Thus, take the time to go over your essay.

Furthermore, when editing your essay, pay attention to:

  • Readability 
  • Consistency of the language
  • Argument reasoning and rationale
  • Transition between paragraphs
  • Writing style
  • Citations and referencing 

Lastly, given that Spanish is not your first language, I always recommend having someone else proofread your final draft before sending it out or printing it. A native Spanish speaker can easily spot mistakes that you might have missed, which could affect your article’s natural flow. 

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spanish essay on school

How to Make your Spanish Essay More Persuasive 

Now that you have finished writing a good Spanish essay, you might want to go the extra mile by making it more persuasive. 

A  Spanish persuasive essay  or any persuasive essays’ goal is to convince the reader to think like you or validate your perspective. But, some topics can be more subjective than others. Thus, to make sure your essay is effective, always rely on others. 

In other words, don’t let your argument stand-alone—research statistics, graphs, information, and data that can back up what you are saying. Citing or quoting experts in the field is also a great way to go about it as it allows your message to carry more weight. 

Nonetheless, make sure you are only using reliable sources. Below a list of ways to vet a reference to make sure your  Spanish persuasive essay  uses only the best sources:

Verify the information you already have against the data found in the source.

• Authority

Make sure a dependable author or institution writes the source.

Depending on your subject, your currency needs will vary. Thus, make sure to check when was the book or article written/published.

As a rule of thumb, I consider a reliable source:

• Materials published within the last five years

• Official websites (.gov., .edu,.org)

• Academic databases

• Articles published by well-known authors or experts in a specific topic

There you have it! Six easy steps that will help you write a good Spanish essay and a few tips and tricks to make it more persuasive.

Spanish essay example – See below

Cómo desarrollar una estrategia efectiva de teletrabajo.

[Start of the Introduction section]

El Covid-19 ha llevado a muchas empresas a migrar de un trabajo presencial al teletrabajo. Según Global Workplace Analytics [ and in the end you can add the reference to your Bibliografía ], unos 75 millones de trabajadores de los EEUU podrían teletrabajar al menos un parte de su jornada de trabajo. Sin embargo, para muchos sectores esto se ha convertido en un verdadero reto.

Aunque para muchos no sea obvio, los beneficios de trabajar con equipos remotos son incontables, siempre que construyas una política realmente efectiva y diseñes el proceso de reclutamiento acertado. Así es que si buscas desarrollar una estrategia efectiva de teletrabajo, debes asegurarte de que tus empleados o candidatos para trabajar a distancia, cuenten con las herramientas adecuadas.

[End of the Introdution]

[Start of the body section]

Cuando comiences a reclutar personas (nuevas o dentro de tu mismo equipo de trabajo), asegúrate de informarles de las cualidades indispensables que buscas en un candidato. No todo el mundo podrá unirse a la modalidad de teletrabajo por más que la situación lo requiera.

Por ejemplo , si una de las características más importantes para el desarrollo del proyecto es la conectividad, los candidatos adecuados deben poder estar a tu disponibles a través de sus computadoras o dispositivos móviles. Mónica Zent [ another reference in our Bibliografía section ], fundadora de Foxwordy la primera red social privada para abogados, recomienda que a todos los candidatos se les debería preguntar acerca de sus hábitos digitales. Pues, los candidatos ideales para el teletrabajo son aquellos que tienen disponibilidad y buena disposición para mantenerse conectados o conectarse en el momento en que sea necesario.

Del mismo modo , debes infórmales sobre de tus reglas para el teletrabajo y ayudarlos a mejorar sus métodos de gestión del tiempo. La idea es que te apoyes en un equipo eficiente, pero que además sea capaz de lograr un buen equilibrio entre la vida y el trabajo. Aunque la flexibilidad es una de las características inherentes del trabajo remoto, debes construir una política firme según las necesidades específicas de tu proyecto para poder dirigir un equipo eficiente y efectivo.

Las horas laborales oficiales, dependerán de los requerimientos de tu proyecto, por lo que es importante que los miembros de tu equipo sepan a qué horario atenerse. En caso de que los miembros de tu equipo tengan distintos husos horarios, define uno oficial con el que todos se sientan cómodos.

Determina los días que necesites una videoconferencia con todo el equipo dentro del huso horario oficial. Estas llamadas les permitirán recordar que trabajan con otras personas aunque por lo general hagan sus tareas aislados. Promueve el uso de la webcam para que todos estén concentrados en la conversación y estén realmente presentes. El verse las caras permite la comprensión del lenguaje corporal y una mejor comunicación.

[End of body section]

[Start of the conclusion section]

En conclusión, una estrategia efectiva de trabajo remoto dependerá de la forma en la que buscas y vetas los candidatos en tu empresa. No todo el mundo tiene la capacidad de trabajar desde casa de manera efectiva.

Además , recuerda hacer hincapié en la modalidad de trabajo y plantea una estructura clara donde se establezcan horarios, reuniones y seguimientos para lograr los mejores resultados.

Si logras incoporar todas estas prácticas dentro de tu modelo de negocio, tendrás un equipo remoto efectivo, compenetrado y eficiente. Tres factores de vital importancia para sobrepasar la crisis mundial que nos ha tocado vivir este 2020.

Bibliografía

  • Global Workplace Analytics, 2020. How many people could work-from-home . Consultado a 04.10.2020 en [https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/how-many-people-could-work-from-home].
  • Zent, Mónica, 2015. Monica Zent’s 5 Ways to Effectively Lead Remote Teams . Consutlado a 04.10.2020 en [https://medium.com/@MonicaZent/monica-zent-s-5-ways-to-effectively-lead-remote-teams-the-most-cutting-edge-companies-of-the-ab409c3db16a]
  • Introducción
  • “En los EE. UU., 4.7 millones de empleados trabajan desde casa al menos la mitad de la semana.”
  • Qué estas buscando
  • Conectividad
  • Disponibilidad
  • El candidato ideal
  • Tip de Mónica Zent
  • Flexibilidad
  • Modalidad de trabajo
  • Estrategia/planificación
  • Video conferencias/Uso de la webcam
  • Fechas de entrega

List of words

  • Work remotely = Trabajo remoto/teletrabajo
  • Flexibilty = Felixbilidad
  • Availability = Disponibilidad
  • 24/7 Connectivity = Conectividad las 24 horas
  • Must-haves = Cualidades indispensables
  • Video conference = Video conferencias
  • Deadlines = Fechas de entrega
  • Time zone = huso horario
  • Webcam = webcam

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Spanish Essay Phrases: 40 Useful Phrases for an Impressive Writeup

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May 30, 2019

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Do you need to write a lot of essays in Spanish? If you do, don’t worry. It's about to get a little bit easier for you because here in this article, we’ve listed many useful Spanish essay phrases that you can readily use in your essays.

Essay Phrases

Feel free to pepper your essays with the words and expressions from this list. It would certainly elevate your essays and impress your teachers. You're welcome!

Get the PDF ( + MP3!)

No time to read now? Then you might opt to get the list in PDF instead. If you sign up to the newsletter, you'll get the list of Spanish essay phrases in PDF format plus free audio files. 

Spanish Essay Phrases

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Additional Resources

You can also check out the following resources:

84 Spanish Expressions for Agreeing and Disagreeing

Common Spanish Verbs

Expresiones útiles para escribir en español

Looking for more Spanish phrases? Check out this e-book with audio!

Try to use the essay phrases in Spanish that you learned in this lesson and write a few example sentences in the comments section!

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About the author 

Janey is a fan of different languages and studied Spanish, German, Mandarin, and Japanese in college. She has now added French into the mix, though English will always be her first love. She loves reading anything (including product labels).

VERY VERY useful !! Gracias

Amazing! This will definitely help me in tomorrow’s spanish test 🙂

Sounds good

Thanks for the assistance, in learning Spanish.

Amazing article! Very helpful! Also, this website is great for Spanish Beginners.

It’s easy when you put it that way

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Basic Guidelines For Writing Essays in Spanish

how to write essays in spanish

Students tend to focus on speaking practice while learning Spanish, so they often neglect writing. However, most educators emphasize its importance for mastering the language. They say it’s impossible to become fluent in a particular language if one doesn’t train writing skills. 

Therefore, teachers give a lot of essay assignments to students. This type of homework is a great way to inspire them to think and communicate in Spanish effectively. It may be quite difficult to complete such a task. However, it’s one of the most effective ways to learn Spanish or any other language.

You may be tempted to go online and find the best essay writing service to have your essay written for you. This may be helpful when you’re pressed for time, but in the long run, you’re missing an opportunity to improve your own essay writing skills. That’s why we are going to provide you with some recommendations on how to ease the writing process.

Some tips on writing in Spanish 

  • Be careful with word spelling. Remember that teachers pay special attention to spelling so it can either make or break your student image. Having good spelling makes a positive impression of your writing skills and boosts your grades. 
  • Make your essay coherent with the help of connectors. Use them to explain the relationship between the ideas so your essay doesn’t look like just a list of thoughts and facts. 
  • Pay attention to syntax or the word order. As you need to stick to the academic style, try to keep the traditional order such as “subject + verb + objects”. This will also help you express your opinion in a simpler way, so it’s more clear to the reader.
  • Avoid word repetitions by using synonyms. Frequent repetitions make your text boring and heavy. If you use the same words again and again, your essay will look dull. Hence, try to find synonyms in Spanish thesaurus and replace the most commonly used expressions with them. 
  • Before you create a final version of your essay, let someone read it and give feedback. It’s hard to be objective about your writing, so ask another person to tell you which ideas are less clear if your text contains any confusing phrases, and what are the positive aspects that can be reinforced. 
  • Do not write the essay in your native language first to translate it into Spanish then. This approach is not viable for mastering a foreign language. The only thing that you are doing by translating the text literally is practicing the grammatical structures that you have learned. This doesn’t help you learn new idioms and collocations that don’t follow the general grammatical rules. 

Now that you know how to make your writing better, let’s consider a step-by-step guide to essay writing in Spanish. 

Pick an interesting topic 

If possible, choose a topic you are truly excited about. Unless the specific title was given to you by instructors, find a theme you want to research and write about. True interest is what will drive you towards creating an excellent piece. If you enjoy reading about the subject you are going to analyze in your essay, then you will definitely succeed in writing. Remember that decent work can be done only if you are passionate about it. 

Brainstorm the ideas 

When it comes to any project, brainstorming is an integral stage of the creation process. This is one of the most efficient ways to gain insights and generate new ideas. You can use this technique to think of the main supporting arguments, an approach for a catchy introduction, and paragraph organization. You can also try freewriting and/or make a brief outline to ease the writing process itself. 

Create an introduction 

Probably the main rule about creating an introduction that you have to stick to is adding a clear thesis statement there. It must be included in the first paragraph to give your essay a certain direction and help the readers focus their attention on the topic. Also, your introduction must be catchy and intriguing to evoke the desire to read the essay further and learn more. 

Organize an essay body 

It’s essential to make the body paragraphs organized logically. You need to make sure that each of them is closely related to the main topic and discusses one major point. Each body paragraph must consist of a topic sentence and supporting arguments with evidence. It’s very important to write sentences in a logical sequence so they follow each other orderly. Also, since paragraphs shouldn’t overlap in content, add smooth transitions from one to the other. 

Sum up the content 

The vital requirement to the conclusion is that it must logically relate to the original thesis statement. Generally, it’s not acceptable to introduce new ideas in the conclusion. Instead, you need to sum up the main points mentioned in the essay’s body. It’s also forbidden to add any off-topic ideas to the last paragraph of your paper.

Check content relevance and cohesion 

Once you complete the conclusion, read through the essay for relevance and cohesion. Make sure that the whole piece is on the topic and in the mode required. In particular, check if body paragraphs support the thesis statement and whether the conclusion relates to it. After that, read your paper once again to see whether the parts connect together well. Think if there are logical links between ideas and if you need more transitions. 

Read for clarity and style

Scan your essay to find out whether some sections may be unclear to the reader. Analyze the text to find out if it sounds academic and polished. Check if there are any vague pronouns, excessive wording, or awkward phrases. Don’t forget to make sure that all points are listed in similar grammatical forms.

The last stage of your writing process is final proofreading. Read your paper the last time looking at grammar, spelling, punctuation, verb tense, word forms, and pronoun agreement. Correct all the mistakes to make your work excellent. 

Remember that the most important thing about learning a foreign language is a regular practice. Therefore, you should use any opportunity provided by instructors to polish your skills. Hopefully, the recommendations given above will help you write an excellent essay and master the Spanish language!

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Spanish Writing Activities, 25 Spanish Writing Projects

25 Spanish writing activities and Spanish writing projects

In this series on teaching Spanish writing skills, we’ve discussed using templates to model good writing , as well as the importance of Spanish transition words to decrease choppiness.  This post will continue the writing discussion with ideas for great Spanish writing activities and Spanish writing projects to use all year long with your high school or middle school students.

Without further ado, here are some ideas:

Spanish Writing Activities (Level 1)

For level 1, I focus primarily on speaking and communication skills for at least the first half of the year before adding in a whole lot of writing.  Sentences or short paragraphs are fine, but avoid long compositions until they are more confident and competent with their communication skills.

That said, here are a few shorter projects:

Postcard Project (Level 1) 

Students pretend they are on vacation in a Spanish Speaking country.  Pass out an index card and have students draw/print and paste photos of the scenery on one side and describe their vacation on the other.

Teach them a little bit of preterite to help them talk about where they went and what they saw.  (Fui a . . ., Fuimos a, Vi, Vimos, Fue  muy divertido, muy interesante, un viaje fantástico.).  Don’t teach them the whole verb conjugation – only teach that “Fui a” means “I went”, “Fuimos a” means we went, “Vi” means “I saw”, “Vimos” means “We saw” and “Fue” means “It was “.  Ex.  I’m in Panama.  There are a lot of colorful birds here.  The weather is nice.  Today we went to an incredible national park.  We saw lots of interesting animals:  iguanas, agouti, and wild parrots.  Etc.

Social Media Profile 

Have students write their own Facebook profile or other social media profile.  They can answer questions such as:  Where do you live, what do you like to do, what is your profession, etc.

Secret Valentines

Select another student’s name for each student (boys to boys, girls to boys, girls to girls) and have them write super cheesy valentines to their secret valentine.  Tell them that the whole point is to write the cheesiest valentine.  Students give you the valentines when they are done and you pass them out.  They try to guess who their secret valentine is.

Grab your free list of Valentine’s vocab in the Free Resource Library .

All about Me Writing Project

This one is great for an end-of-year project.  Students describe themselves, their families, their likes and dislikes, etc.  Get this free template in the Free Resource Library .

Beginning of the year Spanish writing project

All about Me Spanish Writing Project

Spanish Writing Activities (Level 2) 

Instagram posts.

Students take photos and write Instagram posts describing what they did over the summer, winter break, spring break, etc.

Personal Narrative

All about Me Project (with or without the template).  See above.

Describe a Typical Day

Students describe their daily routine (great for reflexive verbs and time).  If you want to add an extra fun element to this, offer extra credit if they act their days out in front of the class as funny people.  Student A is behind Student B and is the arms and does all the actions while Student A talks.  This is really funny as they try to brush teeth, hair, etc.  Students love this activity.

Collage People

Students cut out pictures of different activities and paste them (or they can draw them) onto an outline of a person.  They then write about the person that they have created, describing their likes and dislikes.

Spanish Photo Collage

How to Project

Write instructions explaining how to make or do something (could be a recipe or a simple craft).

Create a Pamphlet

Make a pamphlet or brochure for a gym/weight loss program.

Preterite  

One crazy family.

Write about a crazy family and all the crazy things that they did all week long.  Have them act out the actions in front of the class with props.

Ex.  The Gonzalez family is really crazy.  On Tuesday, Marta ate worms and crickets for dinner.  On Friday night, Luis and Rosa rode elephants and parked them in the supermarket parking lot.  What a mess!

Postcard Project (Level 2)

Students pretend they are on vacation in a Spanish Speaking country.  Pass out an index card and have students draw/print and paste photos of the scenery on one side and describe their vacation on the other.  Can be used with just preterite or preterite/imperfect.

Get more preterite/imperfect activities here.

Your Life As a Kid

Write about what your life was like when you were a kid.  Students leave the name off and attach a photo from when they were little.  Post them around the class with a number by each essay.  Students try to guess who each person is.

Famous Person’s Life

Write about the life of a famous person.

Penpal Letters

Connect with another class in a Spanish-speaking country and have your students correspond with other students throughout the year.  Collect the letter and mail them in one big envelope to save on postage (or even better, correspond via email).

Letter for Next Year

Write a letter to next year’s students telling them about your teacher and what they should expect from Spanish class.

Spanish Writing Activities (Levels 3, 4, 5)

Preterite vs. imperfect, class story.

Write a class story.  Begin with a starter sentence like:  It was a dark and stormy night.  Students in class take turns adding on sentences.  To get more touches with the language, divide the class into groups and let them brainstorm their own stories and then write on the board as they go.  Share and correct the stories as a class afterward.

Life in the Past

Compare and contrast life today with life 50 years ago.

Photo Prompt

Use a funny photo as a writing prompt.  Ex. What happened to cause this event?

Spanish Writing Prompts

Photo Writing

Show a picture with lots of things happening in it.  Have students write as much as they can about the picture for 2-5 minutes.

Spanish Writing Activities

Retell a Fairy Tale

Students write out a traditional fairy tale but change some of the details to give it a funny twist.

Change the Ending

Write the ending to a story that the class is reading before you read it.

Famous People

Students research a famous Hispanic and write a resume based on that person’s life.  I like to have them add an audio-visual element to the presentation (showcasing their art, music, etc.).  Get a ready-made Famous Hispanics game and project.

Movie/Book Review

Students write a review critiquing a movie or book.

Students write a blog post about a topic of their choosing:  exercise, sports, fashion, healthy eating, etc.  Have them use info. that you are studying (specific verb tenses or grammar points, transition words ) in their posts.

Journal Writing

Have students write once a week in Spanish journals (either in class or at home).  Be sure to tell them not to write stuff that is super personal because you will be reading it.

Journal Writing with Prompts

Give students a new prompt for each writing session.  Base the prompts on the season or specific grammar points that you’re studying.  Ex.  (For Halloween)  Describe the best Halloween costume that you ever wore.  Ex. (For imperfect subjunctive)  If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?

Controversial Opinion Piece

Students present one side of a debate for a controversial topic.  As the teacher, you may wish to select certain topics to choose from or you may decide to give students permission to choose (just have them check with you first before they start to write).

Future Plans

Describe what your life will be like in 10, 20, or 30 years.

Conditional

Have students answer any of the following writing prompts:  1.  What would you do if you won $1,000,000?  2.  What changes would you make if you were the principal of your school?  3.  If you could have any special power, what would it be and why?

25 Spanish writing activities and Spanish writing projects

25 Spanish Writing Activities

End of Year Projects for Upper-Level Students

Spanish fairy tales.

Students write and illustrate fairy tales using complex verb tenses and transition words.  Give them a specific amount of transition words to use (10-15), and specific verbs (must use at least 3 conditional, 5 preterite, 5 imperfect, 3 subjunctive, etc.).  Get the instructions, rubrics, and samples to show your students here .

Write a Chapter

Write an additional chapter from a book that you’ve read this year.  Include elements in the style of that particular author.  My favorite book is “ Cuentos con sazón “.  Each chapter talks about a moral problem that a kid encountered with some sort of resolution, centered around a festival in a Spanish-speaking country and involving some yummy traditional food.

Hope you found these ideas helpful and inspiring!  Have a great Spanish writing project that we should all know about – let me know in the comments so I can add it to this post.

Be sure to check out the other parts of this Spanish writing series:  “ Using Spanish Writing Templates ” and “ Using Spanish Transition Words to Improve Writing “.

Helpful ready-made resources:

Grab these ready-made helpful writing resources: 101 Spanish Transition Words Spanish Fairy Tale Project Spanish Writing Section for an Exam

Happy Teaching! ~Sherry

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spanish essay on school

Spanish Ebook with Teaching Tips and Free Lesson Plans

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Vivian Colon

Thank you so much for sharing these writing ideas. I can’t wait to try them next semester. !Muchas gracias!

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Sherry Sebesta

So happy to hear that they were helpful, Vivian! Thanks for letting me know. 🙂

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I would like to use all these ideas and projects that you have in your page, I found it very interesting!

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spanish essay on school

51 Spanish Phrases for Essays to Impress with Words

  • January 7, 2021

Joanna Lupa

Communicating in a foreign language is hard enough, even in everyday situations, when no sophisticated or academic vocabulary is needed. 

Being able to write an actual essay in Spanish requires you not only to have a solid grammar base but also be knowledgeable about specific phrases and words typically used in school and university writing. 

For those of you who study in one of the Spanish speaking countries or are toying with the idea of signing up for an exchange program, I have prepared a summary of useful Spanish phrases for essays. They are divided into the following categories:

  • Connectors (sequence, contrast, cause and effect, additional information, and conclusion)
  • Expressions to give your opinion, agree and disagree with a thesis
  • fancy academic expressions

Spanish Connectors to Use in Essays

Written language tends to be more formal than the spoken one. Ideas get explained in complex sentences showing how they relate to each other. A fantastic tool to achieve that is connectors.

What are some useful Spanish connectors for essays? Let’s have a look at the ten examples below:

  • 🇪🇸 primero – 🇬🇧 first
  • 🇪🇸 segundo – 🇬🇧 second
  • 🇪🇸 el siguiente argumento – 🇬🇧 the next argument
  • 🇪🇸 finalmente – 🇬🇧 finally, last but not least 
  • 🇪🇸 sin embargo – 🇬🇧 however, nevertheless, nonetheless
  • 🇪🇸 por lo tanto – 🇬🇧 therefore, thus
  • 🇪🇸 además – 🇬🇧 besides
  • 🇪🇸 por un lado….por el otro lado – 🇬🇧 on the one hand….on the other hand
  • 🇪🇸 a menos que – 🇬🇧 unless
  • 🇪🇸 a pesar de (algo) – 🇬🇧 despite / in spite of (something)
  • 🇪🇸 aunque / a pesar de que – 🇬🇧 although / even though
  • 🇪🇸 debido a – 🇬🇧 due to
  • 🇪🇸 puesto que / dado que – 🇬🇧 given that
  • 🇪🇸 ya que –  🇬🇧 since
  • 🇪🇸 mientras que – 🇬🇧 whereas
  • 🇪🇸 en conclusión – 🇬🇧 in conclusion
  • 🇪🇸 para concluir – 🇬🇧 to conclude

Do you think you would know how to use these connectors in an essay? Let’s suppose you are writing about ecology:

🇪🇸 Los paises han estado cambiando sus politicas. Sin embargo, aún queda mucho por hacer.  🇬🇧 Countries have been changing their policies. However, there is still a lot to do. 

🇪🇸 Una de las amenazas climáticas es el efecto invernadero. Además está la contaminación del agua que presenta un serio riesgo para la salud.  🇬🇧 One of the climate threats is the greenhouse effect. Besides, there is water pollution that presents a severe health hazard. 

🇪🇸 A pesar de los acuerdos internacionales, varios países no han mejorado sus normas ambientales.  🇬🇧 Despite international agreements, many countries haven’t yet improved their environmental standards. 

🇪🇸 Debido a la restricción en el uso de bolsas de plástico desechables, Chile ha podido reducir su huella de carbono.  🇬🇧 Due to the restrictions in the use of disposable plastic bags, Chile has been able to reduce its carbon print. 

Spanish Phrases to Express Your Opinion in Essays

Essay topics commonly require you to write what you think about something. Or whether you agree or disagree with an idea, a project, or someone’s views. 

The words below will allow you to express your opinion effortlessly and go beyond the typical “creo que ” – “ I think ”:

  • 🇪🇸 (yo) opino que – 🇬🇧 in my opinion
  • 🇪🇸 me parece que – 🇬🇧 it seems to me
  • 🇪🇸 desde mi punto de vista – 🇬🇧 from my point of view
  • 🇪🇸 (no) estoy convencido que  – 🇬🇧 I am (not) convinced that
  • 🇪🇸 no me cabe la menor duda – 🇬🇧 I have no doubt 
  • 🇪🇸 estoy seguro que – 🇬🇧 I’m sure
  • 🇪🇸 dudo que – 🇬🇧 I doubt
  • 🇪🇸 sospecho que – 🇬🇧 I suspect
  • 🇪🇸 asumo que – 🇬🇧 I assume
  • 🇪🇸 estoy (totalmente, parcialmente) de acuerdo – 🇬🇧 I (totally, partially) agree
  • 🇪🇸 no estoy de acuerdo en absoluto – 🇬🇧 I absolutely disagree
  • 🇪🇸 opino diferente – 🇬🇧 I have a different opinion
  • 🇪🇸 me niego a aceptar – 🇬🇧 I refuse to accept
  • 🇪🇸 estoy en contra / a favor de – 🇬🇧 I am against / in favor of
  • 🇪🇸 no podría estar más de acuerdo – 🇬🇧 I couldn’t agree more
  • 🇪🇸 encuentro absolutamente cierto / falso  – 🇬🇧 I find it absolutely correct / false

Phrases like these can really give shape to your essay and increase its formality level. This time, let’s verify it with views on education: 

🇪🇸 Opino que estudiando remotamente los jóvenes están perdiendo las habilidades sociales.  🇬🇧 In my opinion, remote schooling makes youngsters lose their social skills. 

🇪🇸 Dudo que esta decisión traiga verdaderos cambios para el sistema educacional en mi país.  🇬🇧 I doubt this change will bring any real changes to the educational system in my country. 

🇪🇸 Estoy totalmente de acuerdo con que todos deberían tener acceso a educación de calidad. 🇬🇧 I totally agree that everyone should have access to good quality education. 

🇪🇸 Estoy en contra de escuelas solo para niñas o solo para niños.  🇬🇧 I am against girls-only or boys-only schools. 

Pay attention to certain language differences between English and Spanish versions. The most common mistake that my students make is to say “ I am agree ” ❌ (direct translation from “ Estoy de acuerdo ”) instead of “ I agree ”✔️. 

Fancy Academic Verbs and Expressions for Essays in Spanish

Would you like to impress your professor with sophisticated academic vocabulary or get extra points on your DELE? Grab a pen and take notes:

  • 🇪🇸 afirmar  – 🇬🇧 to state
  • 🇪🇸 refutar – 🇬🇧 to refute, to reject
  • 🇪🇸 argumentar – 🇬🇧 to argue that
  • 🇪🇸 poner en duda  – 🇬🇧 to cast doubt
  • 🇪🇸 poner en evidencia – 🇬🇧 to shed light 
  • 🇪🇸 demostrar – 🇬🇧 to demonstrate
  • 🇪🇸 concentrarse en – 🇬🇧 to focus on
  • 🇪🇸 sostener – 🇬🇧 to sustain
  • 🇪🇸 reflejar – 🇬🇧 to reflect
  • 🇪🇸 considerando (que) – 🇬🇧 considering (that)
  • 🇪🇸 siendo realista – 🇬🇧 realistically speaking
  • 🇪🇸 de cierto modo – 🇬🇧 in a way
  • 🇪🇸 en lo que se refiere a – 🇬🇧 with regards to
  • 🇪🇸 en vista de – 🇬🇧 in view of
  • 🇪🇸 de acuerdo a – 🇬🇧 according to
  • 🇪🇸 no obstante – 🇬🇧 nevertheless

So many great words to work with! And some of them sound really similar to English, right? This is exactly why Spanish is such a good option when you want to learn a second language.

Let’s see how to make all these verbs and phrases work:

🇪🇸 Los resultados de los nuevos estudios ponen en duda la relación entre el consumo de huevos y altos niveles de colesterol.  🇬🇧 The recent study findings cast doubt on the relation between egg consumption and high cholesterol levels. 

🇪🇸 Los autores del estudio argumentan que los azucares y los carbohidratos juegan un rol importante en este asunto.  🇬🇧 The authors of the study argue that sugars and carbs play an important role in this topic. 

🇪🇸 En lo que se refiere al consumo de carne, este influye directamente los niveles de colesterol malo, sobre todo si es carne con mucha grasa. 🇬🇧 Regarding meat consumption, it directly influences the levels of “bad” cholesterol, especially in the case of greasy meat. 

Joanna Lupa

Spanish Resources

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Spanish Words to Use in an Essay

Are you writing an essay in Spanish and aren't sure of the best way to start the next paragraph? Or maybe you're trying to think of some connectors to make your essay flow better. Look no further! In this article, we've prepared a list of words that will help you write that Spanish essay without even breaking a sweat.

Looking to learn more phrases in Spanish? Check these articles out!

  • Fundamental Spanish Phrases to Learn Right Away
  • Spanish Exclamatory Words and Expressions
  • Spanish Idioms
  • How to Say "I Don't Understand" in Spanish
  • How to Say “Good Morning” in Spanish
  • "Good Night" in Spanish
  • How to Say "I Speak a Little Spanish"
  • Words of Encouragement in Spanish
  • Common Mistakes in Spanish

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La Rutina – Describing your Daily Routine in Spanish

¿Qué haces todos los días? ¿Cuál es tu rutina diaria? These are two common questions to ask about someone’s daily routine in Spanish – la rutina diaria. In a previous lesson, we covered the most important words for  everyday activities  and made sentences with reflexive and non-reflexive verbs. This lesson will go a little further and teach you how to use the right vocabulary, phrases and structures to describe what you do daily to your friends or class. By the end of the lesson, we expect you to be able to write sentences and short descriptions about your daily routine in Spanish.

Vocabulary review: Daily routine and reflexive verbs in Spanish

First, we will review the vocabulary for daily activities. All the activities used to describe daily routines in Spanish are represented by verbs . This video explains how to conjugate reflexive verbs and use them to make sentences about everyday activities, as well as  how to ask what someone does every day and more. The final part of the video shows a short passage describing someone’s daily routine in Spanish for a typical day. The video is easy to follow and also includes many important things that you will not find in the rest of the lesson. Please activate the captions (cc) if you need them.

Describing daily routines in Spanish: examples and common verbs

Spanish reflexive verbs in daily routines.

Most activities in daily routines are verbs in infinitive like JUGAR (to play) or COMER (to eat), and sometimes Spanish reflexive verbs such as DESPERTARSE (wake up) and VESTIRSE (get dressed). In order to conjugate reflexive verbs, you have to conjugate the first part of the verb following the rules for regular or irregular verbs , and add a reflexive pronoun that agrees with the subject in the sentence. Too much, we know! That is why Spanish reflexive verbs are covered with a lot more details in an independent lesson. That being said, DESPERTARSE will change to “(Yo) Me despierto”, “(Tú) Te despiertas”, “(Él/Ella/Usted)Se despierta”.

Los verbos reflexivos en la rutina diaria y cómo conjugarlos.

The first example of a daily routine will show someone talking about his morning routine in Spanish, “ la rutina de la mañana “. Sequence words like “Primero” (first), “Luego” (then), “Antes de” (before), “Después de” (after) and “Finalmente”(finally) will be used in most descriptions to connect ideas. This will make the descriptions more real and complete. Pay attention to the way the vocabulary for daily routines in the box is used to make meaningful sentences and a complete paragraph.

My daily routine in Spanish

Example no. 1: mi rutina de la mañana en español (with some reflexive verbs).

Daily routine activities and verbs in Spanish

Mi nombre es Ben. Yo me despierto a las seis de la mañana. Primero,  me levanto y luego me baño por 10 minutos. Antes de desayunar yo me cepillo los dientes y me visto. Después yo desayuno con mis hermanos y mis padres. Finalmente me voy a la escuela y regreso a mi casa al medio día.

Non-reflexive verbs in daily routines

In the previous example, the guy was talking about his own routine so he used sentences with the structure “Yo me + verb + complement”. As you can see in that example, verbs like DESAYUNAR and REGRESAR do not need the reflexive pronoun ME  because both of them are non-reflexive verbs in Spanish. For the verb IR, both “Yo me voy…” and “Yo voy…” are possible.

Here is a second example, but this time including some words for hobbies  and likes (ME GUSTA + activity) , as well as frequency adverbs such as “Siempre” (always), “De vez en cuando” (sometimes) and “A veces” (sometimes), besides non-reflexive verbs in the same paragraph about a daily routine in Spanish.

Example No. 2: My daily routine (including non-reflexive verbs)

Talking about your daily routine in Spanish verbs

Yo hago muchas actividades todos los días. Voy a la escuela en la mañana. Después de regresar almuerzo y descanso por una hora. Luego hago mis tareas y estudio para el día siguiente. Me gusta ver televisión y jugar videojuegos. También me gusta practicar deportes como fútbol y béisbol de vez en cuando. Siempre ayudo a limpiar la casa, lavar los trastes y hacer los quehaceres en la casa. A veces voy al cine con mis amigos o jugamos juntos.

Describing other people’s routine in Spanish

To talk about the activities that other people do  on a daily basis, we will use reflexive pronouns that actually refer to other people, not only “ME”, for example: “ Ella se baña ” (she takes a shower), “ Tú te vistes ” (You get dressed) and so on.

You can even say if a person has an interesting (interesante), simple (sencilla) or busy (ocupada) routine. Besides, you can combine sentences about your daily routine in Spanish with activities that other people do, e.g. “ Yo me levanto temprano y él se levanta tarde ” (I get up early and he gets up late). Normally, all you need to know is which verbs will behave in a reflexive way and which will not. It all comes to practice and seeing examples, so here is one more daily routine description for you to learn a few more things.

Example No. 3: My family’s daily activities in Spanish

spanish essay on school

Nuestra rutina diaria en español Yo hago muchas actividades todos los días. Tengo dos hijos, un niño y una niña. Me levanto a las 6 de la mañana, cocino el desayuno para nosotros y les ayudo a mis hijos a alistarse para ir a la escuela. Marcos se baña y se viste solo. Rosa hace muchas cosas por sí misma. Yo voy a mi trabajo a las 8 de la mañana. Cuando regreso hacemo s los quehaceres juntos y cenamos. Los niños se duermen a las 10 de la noche. En general, es una rutina muy ocupada.

Listening Activity No. 1: My daily routine in Spanish – Mi rutina diaria

Listening activity no. 2: what’s your routine like – ¿cómo es tu rutina, extra practice: finding the right order for a daily routine, practice and writing: a short essay about your daily routine in spanish.

Write a short essay talking about your daily routine. You can simply write three paragraphs, one talking about your morning routine in Spanish, another about the activities you do in the afternoon and so on. If possible, share it with a native speaker and ask him about his as well. 

Related Spanish Worksheets:

  • Telling Time in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
  • Daily Activities in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
  • Verbs for Daily Routines in Spanish – Crossword Puzzle
  • My Daily Routine in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
  • Daily Activities & Time in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
  • Household Chores in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
  • Dialogues about daily routines in Spanish – PDF Worksheet

22 thoughts on “La Rutina – Describing your Daily Routine in Spanish”

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I really enjoyed the different excercises and fun & games to help me to comprehend my Spanish work. They really helped me!

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Hola, Thanks for your comment. We are happy to hear this lesson helped you. La idea es ayudar un poquito…

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Muchas gracias! Excelente trabajo!

Muchas gracias 🙂

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The lessons are good. However I find the music background very distracting. Much harder to concentrate.

Thanks! We’ll keep it in mind for improvements 🙂

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this was not fun

but it was helpful

Hello everybody. We recently updated and improved the quality of all the podcasts in this lesson. ¡Éxito aprendiendo español! 🙂

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where is number 6

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muchas gracis 🙂

¡De nada! Gracias a ti.

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this was really helpful thank u…. i m currently in spanish 2 class and this really helped me understand THANKS! ;D

We’re happy to hear that. Enjoy learning Spanish! 🙂

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Thanks for this man. My professor in college couldn’t teach me in 1 month what your website did in 20 minutes.

Thanks! We’re happy you found the lesson useful. We will continue adding more and better content for learners like you. ¡Buen día! 🙂

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Este es un buen sitio para aprender español. Por favor, continúen haciendo más lecciones. ¡Saludos desde filipinas!

Muchas gracias por tu comentario. Seguiremos trabajando para crear nuevas lecciones y mejorar las que ya tenemos. Saludos hasta Filipinas 🙂

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this was helpful i was able to pass my spaish test with the blink of an eye seems like id be using this site often

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Just a note that in your example about cooking that “Ella nos cocina el desayuno” is not a use of a reflexive verb but “nos” is the object of the verb. 🙂

Yes, you are completely right. We will soon update the lesson to avoid any confusion we may have caused with direct or indirect object pronouns. ¡Gracias! ¡Un abrazo!

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This was a very good website to practice spanish.

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GCSE Spanish

spanish essay on school

Writing essays in Spanish for the open-ended task

The GCSE Open-ended Task is worth 32 points. More than half  of the 60 that can be obtained in the Writing Exam .  So I think it’s worth paying special attention to this activity.

You’ll need to write about 150 words in Spanish , based on two bullet points. You can see an example below , taken for a past exam. In the end, we also have a gift for you. 

Tips to carry out the open-ended task

As in the Structured task , you will have t wo assignments to choose from . Read the instructions carefully before choosing one of the two tasks to work with. T hink about which of them you know more vocabulary abou t, that will be a great help to start!

This task is more creative, make sure you include some opinions with reasons . On the other hand, having a clear purpose will allow you to select the language best suited to your task , it is not the same if you have to write an email to a friend, a letter to the school principal or even you have to write an article for a school magazine.

Organize your writing into a clear structure, which must include three parts:

  • opening – engaging the reader, or outlining the main point of your task
  • middle – a series of paragraphs that go into more detail
  • end – a concluding paragraph that draws the points together

Don’t forget to use various verb tenses and grammar connectors to join your ideas, along with a wide variety of vocabulary.

GCSE open-ended writing task example

Here is an example of a GCSE open-ended task that appeared in a previous exam.

spanish essay on school

Start by explaining what you are going to talk about and what your opinion is on the subject: Creo que ser joven tiene muchísimas cosas buenas, también hay alguna mala, pero son las menos…

To describe that fun day, you will need to use at least the preterite (pretérito indefinido), to talk about the facts, and the imperfect tense (pretérito imperfecto) , to describe the circumstances: Hace dos semanas fui con mis amigos a ver un partido de fútbol, era la final de la copa y estabamos muy ilusionados y nerviosos, porque…

To give your opinion you will need to use the opinion verbs: Creo que, pienso que, en mi opinion… Remember that when you use these verbs in a negative sentence you have to use the subjunctive mood. It will be fantastic if you can use one: No creo que podamos tener un buen trabajo en el futuro…  

Once you have finished your writing, Check through your work carefully . Double-checking your work is really important, even small mistakes can cost marks. Take a look at this checklist:

Spanish grammar check list

Finally, you can send us your essay by email to [email protected], we will be happy to correct it and send it to you with comments . After that, if you want to practice with more tasks like this, you can register as a VIP student.

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St. Mary Magdalen Catholic School Wins National Spanish Spelling Bee

St. Mary Magdalen students

The school has participated in the competition for two years demonstrating impressive skills at both competitions.  The school took home second place in their first year after falling behind by just one point in overtime. This year, they won first place and became national champions. Representatives from the University of Notre Dame came to SMMS to present the winning students with their trophy.

“A lot of preparation came from the school’s Spanish faculty members,” shared William Daily, principal at SMMS. “They taught the students different mechanisms so that they could better understand syllables, accents and capitalization because all of those factors counted in the competition.”

Daily explained that the students worked for about two months to prepare for the competition. Many students even put in after-school hours to familiarize themselves with Spanish words that they might encounter at the spelling bee. This approach helped students develop their level of comprehension and strategies that ultimately helped them during the competition.

St. Mary Magdalen students

“Faith is the number one component here at SMMS,” stated Daily. “It helps them get through so much that life will throw at them. Bilingualism enables them to have a richer and more accessible experience with their faith since the Spanish language is very present in the Catholic faith. This gives them more options to engage with it.”

The school strives to integrate Spanish into all aspects of its curriculum. Mass, prayers, announcements and the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish are a few daily practices that help students to develop their bilingual skills.

Daily and the rest of the SMMS community are extremely proud of the students and how they have represented the school. In light of the school’s recent achievement, Daily expressed,  “It is about the journey, not the trophy. It’s great to have cheers instead of tears, but the process of learning together and the experience makes it worth it.”

Congratulations to the winning students!

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Spanish-speaking parents pack Mission High, voicing concerns on school closures

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A man sitting with crossed arms at a Mission High SFUSD meeting, with other attendees in the background. meeting on school closures.

Leer en español

About 100 concerned parents crammed the library of Mission High School on Wednesday night, hoping that their input could have an impact on the proposed public school closures in the 2025-26 school year.

“I’m against closures or mergers or co-locations,” said Luz H., a parent of an eighth-grader attending an Excelsior public school. “I think the children are paying for bad management of the district.” 

Last week, the school district officially kicked off the discussion on school closures in a virtual town hall. It is a conversation triggered by a seven percent drop in enrollment between 2012 and 2022, and the event at Mission High was one of eight in-person community meetings the school district held recently to seek community input on criteria for closures, mergers and co-locations. The session was led in Spanish, with English interpreters available.

Some parents and community members fear that new immigrants and minority students will be overlooked in the restructuring, some worry about the uncertainty that will follow structural reforms, and some are concerned that school districts will rely on academic performance in determining the fate of their schools.

“I don’t want to close schools. I don’t want more students in the classroom,” said Maria Nuñez, a parent of Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 . But if some schools do need to be closed, she hopes that the school district could “include all voices, voices that are different, the Latino people, Black people, everyone.”

Also, “if they need to cut, cut [the school district’s] central office first,” Nuñez added. “Too many people working there; we need more people working in the classroom.” 

Nuñez was far from the only parent who holds long-lasting grievances towards the central office. A parent spoke into a microphone that, “How are we do the alignment, if not do that in the central office first?”

“I’m here to advocate for my two kids,” said Blanca Catalan, a parent at Raoul Wallenberg High School. “They have established relationships with their teachers, it’s easy for them to ask questions. If they are moved to a bigger school, they won’t be able to do that.”

Similarly, another parent stated her concerns that students might have difficulty adjusting to a new school, as well as what a family could do if the new school is farther from home. “You guys didn’t think about that,” she told the school district staff present. 

Group of people engaged in a collaborative workshop with sticky notes and papers on a table at Mission High.

“When they use academic indicators as a primary factor for closing, it would disproportionately impact the schools that have higher enrollment students of color,” said Efrain Barrera, a parent at A.P. Giannini Middle School and a Latino Task Force director. “Because we know that, structurally, they are the students that are historically underperforming, and that means that they will be more directly impacted as a result.”

Several people at the same table as Berrera shared his view. One of the group’s dozens of post-its read, “Schools who don’t do good academically should not be turned away.” Members at each table wrote down their views on post-it notes and collected them all on a large piece of white paper, which was eventually handed over to the school district as reference. 

Some parents and community members questioned the grounds for the school closures: Decreasing enrollment in San Francisco public schools. “I don’t believe numbers like that are real numbers,” said a parent, who won applause from the whole room. 

Enrollment at the school district has decreased from 52,989 in 2012-13 to 48,907 in 2022-23 and is predicted to lose another 4,600 students by 2032, because of declining birth rates and population exodus, according to the school district. 

On Barrera’s desk, another post-it read, “start with better enrollment process.”

Some parents also said that a survey the school district sent out last week for community input on school closure criteria has a terrible Spanish version, preventing monolingual Spanish-speaking families from taking part in the discussion. A school district official promised to get the problem fixed. In some cases, the moderator also dodged some parents’ questions including the number of schools that would be affected. 

A similar situation also happened during last Thursday’s town hall. Superintendent Matt Wayne said “I see there’s questions about which schools and number of schools; right now, we’re focused on the criteria.”

“​​This is the beginning of the process … to me, that’s a success, when people are asking tough questions, because that’s what real community engagement is,” said school board vice president Matt Alexander. “The board is really pushing staff on this to do real, authentic community engagement.”

The school district is set to come back to the same eight locations for another round of community meetings to discuss the weight of criteria in late April and early May. The next meeting at Mission High is on May 4, between 1 and 2:30 p.m., primarily in Spanish. 

After that, between July and October, in Phase 2 of the Resource Alignment Initiative, the school district will make initial recommendations and partner with third-party organizations to assess their equity and environmental impact.  

In Phase 3, between October and December, the school district will share the recommendations with the school board, which will vote on the list of schools that will be merged, co-located or closed.

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REPORTER. Yujie Zhou is our newest reporter and came on as an intern after graduating from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a full-time staff reporter as part of the Report for America program that helps put young journalists in newsrooms. Before falling in love with the Mission, Yujie covered New York City, studied politics through the “street clashes” in Hong Kong, and earned a wine-tasting certificate in two days. She’s proud to be a bilingual journalist. Follow her on Twitter @Yujie_ZZ.

Join the Conversation

The loss of faith of families in sending their children to our public schools is a direct result of the endless mismanagement of the top administrators. When we see how educators were abused and robbed by the payroll scandal? When we know that the board retroactively approves massive contracts to outside consultants? People do not trust this superintendent and with good reason. The efforts to manufacture consent by coming into the community with a supposed “fact base” that omits a shocking amount of facts, repeating we “must” close schools to be financially prudent is just laughable. The latest hire of yet ANOTHER well paid, top-level “Executive Director” who is charge of strategy and “coherence” is very telling when that person was very openly PRO charter school is his own bid for school board before the pandemic. This person also could not seem to coherently answer pointed and important questions at the legally required District Advisory Committee. To close schools based on faulty data, when SFUSD has shown TK enrollment is actually up, is beyond short-sighted and shows a deep lack of creativity, honesty and respect for our working class.

The real reason for the decline in enrollment is the fear the SFUSD Board put into parents until the worst of them were recalled. Since then the Board has accomplished nothing (and won’t until the rest of the psychos are replaced) and the administration had further shown their incompetence. Of course people who can afford to are moving their kids to private schools or leaving the City. This is entirely on the SFUSD administration and Board.

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Spanish Vocabulary About School

I love school, and so do a lot of other people.

The best part about school is it’s an ideal topic of conversation. Whether you’re chatting about high school memories or your current classes, conversations about school are a great way to break the ice with anyone you meet.

In this post, I’ve compiled a list of 75 essential Spanish words about school to get you started. 

Basic Words

Staff and students, and one more thing….

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

children-running-down-the-hallway-at-school

Before I start, an important grammar tip to remember is that the indefinite articles el (the) or la (the) are used before Spanish nouns. The plurals are los (the) and las (the), and they come in handy when using Spanish school words.

For example, school becomes la escuela (the school) in Spanish, although when translating it, it isn’t always necessary to add “the” into the English translation.

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If you've made it this far that means you probably enjoy learning Spanish with engaging material and will then love FluentU .

Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the Spanish language and culture over time. You’ll learn Spanish as it’s actually spoken by real people.

FluentU has a wide variety of videos, as you can see here:

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FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive transcripts. You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used. If you see an interesting word you don’t know, you can add it to a vocab list.

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Review a complete interactive transcript under the Dialogue tab, and find words and phrases listed under Vocab .

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spanish essay on school

Understanding Childhood Trauma Can Help Us Be More Resilient

Silhouette of a child boy in mental health children awareness concept, flat vector illustration.

I n 2022, the World Health Organization estimated that 1 billion children were maltreated each year around the globe. Maltreatment such as neglect and abuse are types of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs . But they often say little about how children respond, which can either be traumatic or resilient. Now, revolutionary new findings in the sciences help us understand how different dimensions of adversity can leave different signatures of trauma and how we can use this knowledge to help children recover and build resilience against future harms.

Consider Ethan and Kevin (their names are pseudonyms to protect their privacy), two children that I worked with as an educator and researcher of trauma in schools. Ethan was abandoned by his mother at birth and placed in an orphanage in Eastern Europe, his home for the next six years. He was deprived of the fundamental needs of safety, nutrition, and human contact. He had books, but there was no one to read to him. He had caretakers, but they rarely comforted him when he was upset.

Kevin, on the other hand, witnessed his father physically and emotionally abusing his mother for the first ten years of his life. Around his sixth birthday, Kevin directly experienced his father's abuse. For entertainment, and to teach him that life is tough, Dad put Kevin and his older sister Joani into the outdoor dog cage, threw food in, and forced them to compete for their nightly dinner. If they refused, he beat them until they entered the dinner arena.

Ethan and Kevin were both traumatized by their maltreatment, but that doesn't capture what was happening inside of them. Ethan had no motivation, was numb to rewards, struggled with school and couldn't maintain social relationships. Kevin was an emotional maelstrom, frightened, hypervigilant, running away from unfamiliar men and hurting himself when he heard noises. Ethan and Kevin presented different traumatic responses or “signatures”—unique identifiers of the mental distortions created by their adverse experiences. Identifying these traumatic signatures enables caretakers, teachers, doctors, and counselors to sculpt a path to resilience that is specific to the child's harms and needs and gives them the best hope for recovery, whether in childhood or later in life.

Read More: How Traumatized Children See the World, According to Their Drawings

The idea of traumatic signatures is only a few years old , but the scientific evidence leading to it is not. We have known for decades that different environmental experiences shape development, including how and when our emotions, thoughts, and actions mature. When the environment is harsh and unpredictable, threatening survival, the timing of development tends to speed up, leading to individuals who mature quickly—recognizing and responding appropriately to danger as youngsters. In contrast, when the environment is impoverished, with individuals deprived of essential experiences and resources, development tends to slow down, resulting in delays in the attainment of independence, dedicated social roles, and sexual behavior.

Ethan and Kevin, like millions of other children, experienced two of the core types of ACEs — deprivation and abuse, respectively — during different time periods of development. These differences in experience shaped their traumatic signatures.

Deprivation is typified by a delay in the development of the brain’s executive functions —attention, short-term working memory, self-regulation, and planning. The executive functions form the bedrock to all learning and decision-making, but they are also essential in supporting more specialized cognitive functions such as language, social thinking, math, music, and morality. Children with weak executive functions fare poorly in school, and are socially and physically unhealthy. Such was Ethan’s traumatic response.

Abuse is characterized by warp speed development of a nervous system that detects threats, accompanied by hypervigilance, emotional turbulence, and out of control behavior. The root cause is a hyperactive amygdala, a brain region that plays an essential role in emotional processing, and its connection to a frontal lobe region that controls our feelings, thoughts, and actions. This constellation of changes to the nervous system leaves the child in a heightened state of fear, either fleeing or fighting to cope with an unsafe world . Such was Kevin's traumatic response.

The signatures penned by these types of adversity are further modified by their timing. In studies of orphans living in austere, institutionalized settings — such as the orphanage that Ethan grew up in—those deprived of essential experiences for more than the first few years of life showed deficits in executive functioning, social relationships, and attachment. In contrast, orphans who were placed in foster care by their second birthday, largely recovered from their deprivation in the years that followed. Children who are abused earlier in life , typically before puberty—such as Kevin—show greater emotional dysregulation, weaker control over their thoughts and actions, and more rapid biological aging.

Read More: How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Premature Aging

Different types of adversity, including different combinations, pen different signatures. But ultimately, they also define how we help children recover and sculpt their resilience. Each child's genetic architecture positions them somewhere on a spectrum of responses to adversity that runs from vulnerable to resilient . Those who land on the resilient end are handed greater immunity to adversity because of stronger executive functions that tamp down emotions and maintain focused attention. Those who land on the vulnerable end are handed greater sensitivity to adversity, dominated by emotional turbulence and inflamed autoimmune systems that heighten illness . Environmental experiences can displace individuals onto different sections of this spectrum, either enhancing their resilience or magnifying their vulnerability.

At age six, Ethan's tenure of deprivation ended and a rich life of loving care started with Julie, his adoring adoptive mother. At age 10, Kevin's father was incarcerated and his parents divorced, thereby ending his tenure of exposure to abuse and starting a more promising life with his mother Kate who desperately tried to provide for him despite her own struggles with mental health. Ethan and Kevin were both on Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) that documented their disabilities and guided the work carried out in their schools. Both of their schools were trauma-informed, meaning that they adhered to the 4Rs : r ealizing that traumatic experiences are common, r ecognizing that traumatic experiences are associated with specific symptoms or signatures, r esponding to a child's trauma by integrating knowledge of what happened with what can be done to help, and r esisting re-traumatizing both students and staff. Both schools were also aware of Ethan's and Kevin's life experiences and recognized that they would require different approaches for aiding recovery and building resilience.

Ethan, like other children who have been deprived of essential experiences in the early years of their lives, required an approach that reassured him of receiving unwavering, predictable care while providing strategies to enhance his ability to learn and develop healthy relationships. His care included access to a visual schedule that showed the timing of activities, including when meals and snacks were provided. Predictable access to meals and snacks, both at home and in school, rapidly helped reduce his obsession and hoarding of food. The unwavering support provided by Julie as well as the school staff, eventually melted away Ethan's distrust of others, enabling healthy relationships to grow. The visual schedule helped reduce the load on his short- term working memory, while helping him prepare and plan for transitions between activities. Stubbornly resistant to change, however, was Ethan’s capacity to associate or link actions with consequences. For Ethan, as for other children who have been severely deprived of experiences early in life, associative learning was heavily compromised, awaiting the addition of new tools to the trauma-informed toolkit.

Kevin’s signature of abuse was initially treated by a psychiatrist with Tenex—a medication for aggression, impulsivity, and hyperactivity—along with cognitive behavioral therapy to help him find alternative ways of thinking about and coping with his trauma. His teachers intervened further, providing him with frequent breaks to manage his frustration and burn off some energy. These approaches reduced Kevin’s outbursts and violent attacks on peers and staff, but he was still highly impulsive and fidgety. Kevin’s team decided to start him on neurofeedback , a method that enabled him to consciously modify the pattern of brain activation, shifting toward greater calm, focus, and control over his emotions. Eventually, Kevin developed good friends, healthy relationships with teachers, and an after-school job where he was learning to be a car mechanic. He also learned to trust other men, including me, one of his teachers, who deeply cared about him and cheered on his successes.

Ethan and Kevin walked off their landscapes of harm and onto paths of hope, equipped with skills to manage future adversity. Both lucked out with relatively resilient genetic architectures that were joined by nurturing environments, ones filled with people who cared for them. Many other children, perhaps the majority of the 1 billion who are maltreated each year, are less fortunate, more vulnerable by nature and nurture. While it is highly unlikely that we will ever flatten the landscape of harm, we can do far more to nurture recovery and build resilience if we recognize how traumatic signatures unfold—and how to create action plans to work through them.

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Perry High School students win 2024 Perry Optimist essay contest

Perry High School and DMACC students Jennifer Ramos, Erika Guardado, Kain Killmer and Mia Munoz pose for a photo after receiving medals in the Perry Optimist Club essay contest.

Perry Optimist Club handed out medals to the local essay contest winners during its meeting on Wednesday, April 3 at the Hotel Pattee.

Linda Andorf, who facilitated the contest, said DMACC VanKirk Career Academy's Linda Kaufman assigned a writing assignment to her Perry High School/DMACC students. The assignment was graded and was then judged anonymously by Perry Optimist Club members. This year, 32 essays were submitted and four places were awarded.

Erika Guardado won first place while Jennifer Ramos received second place. Mia Munoz and Kain Killmer tied for third place.

The prompt for this year’s contest was "Optimism: How it Connects Us."

Guardado’s essay has been sent to the district level. She will also receive a $500 scholarship during the senior awards assembly in May.

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Guest Essay

Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands

An illustration of a doll in a box attired in a country-western outfit and surrounded by musical accessories and a laptop. The doll wears a distressed expression and is pushing against the front of the box, which is emblazoned with the words “Environmentally Conscious Musician” and “Awesome Applicant.” The backdrop is a range of pink with three twinkling lights surrounding the box.

By Sarah Bernstein

Ms. Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist in Brooklyn.

“I just can’t think of anything,” my student said.

After 10 years of teaching college essay writing, I was familiar with this reply. For some reason, when you’re asked to recount an important experience from your life, it is common to forget everything that has ever happened to you. It’s a long-form version of the anxiety that takes hold at a corporate retreat when you’re invited to say “one interesting thing about yourself,” and you suddenly believe that you are the most boring person in the entire world. Once during a version of this icebreaker, a man volunteered that he had only one kidney, and I remember feeling incredibly jealous of him.

I tried to jog this student’s memory. What about his love of music? Or his experience learning English? Or that time on a summer camping trip when he and his friends had nearly drowned? “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “That all seems kind of cliché.”

Applying to college has always been about standing out. When I teach college essay workshops and coach applicants one on one, I see my role as helping students to capture their voice and their way of processing the world, things that are, by definition, unique to each individual. Still, many of my students (and their parents) worry that as getting into college becomes increasingly competitive, this won’t be enough to set them apart.

Their anxiety is understandable. On Thursday, in a tradition known as “Ivy Day,” all eight Ivy League schools released their regular admission decisions. Top colleges often issue statements about how impressive (and competitive) their applicant pools were this cycle. The intention is to flatter accepted students and assuage rejected ones, but for those who have not yet applied to college, these statements reinforce the fear that there is an ever-expanding cohort of applicants with straight A’s and perfect SATs and harrowing camping trip stories all competing with one another for a vanishingly small number of spots.

This scarcity has led to a boom in the college consulting industry, now estimated to be a $2.9 billion business. In recent years, many of these advisers and companies have begun to promote the idea of personal branding — a way for teenagers to distinguish themselves by becoming as clear and memorable as a good tagline.

While this approach often leads to a strong application, students who brand themselves too early or too definitively risk missing out on the kind of exploration that will prepare them for adult life.

Like a corporate brand, the personal brand is meant to distill everything you stand for (honesty, integrity, high quality, low prices) into a cohesive identity that can be grasped at a glance. On its website, a college prep and advising company called Dallas Admissions explains the benefits of branding this way: “Each person is complex, yet admissions officers only have a small amount of time to spend learning about each prospective student. The smart student boils down key aspects of himself or herself into their personal ‘brand’ and sells that to the college admissions officer.”

Identifying the key aspects of yourself may seem like a lifelong project, but unfortunately, college applicants don’t have that kind of time. Online, there are dozens of lesson plans and seminars promising to walk students through the process of branding themselves in five to 10 easy steps. The majority begin with questions I would have found panic-inducing as a teenager, such as, “What is the story you want people to tell about you when you’re not in the room?”

Where I hoped others would describe me as “normal” or, in my wildest dreams, “cool,” today’s teenagers are expected to leave this exercise with labels like, Committed Athlete and Compassionate Leader or Environmentally Conscious Musician. Once students have a draft of their ideal self, they’re offered instructions for manifesting it (or at least, the appearance of it) in person and online. These range from common-sense tips (not posting illegal activity on social media) to more drastic recommendations (getting different friends).

It’s not just that these courses cut corners on self-discovery; it’s that they get the process backward. A personal brand is effective only if you can support it with action, so instead of finding their passion and values through experience, students are encouraged to select a passion as early as possible and then rack up the experience to substantiate it. Many college consultants suggest beginning to align your activities with your college ambitions by ninth grade, while the National Institute of Certified College Planners recommends students “talk with parents, guardians, and/or an academic adviser to create a clear plan for your education and career-related goals” in junior high.

The idea of a group of middle schoolers soberly mapping out their careers is both comical and depressing, but when I read student essays today, I can see that this advice is getting through. Over the past few years, I have been struck by how many high school seniors already have defined career goals as well as a C.V. of relevant extracurriculars to go with them. This widens the gap between wealthy students and those who lack the resources to secure a fancy research gig or start their own small business. (A shocking number of college applicants claim to have started a small business.) It also puts pressure on all students to define themselves at a moment when they are anxious to fit in and yet changing all the time.

In the world of branding, a word that appears again and again is “consistency.” If you are Charmin, that makes sense. People opening a roll of toilet paper do not want to be surprised. If you are a teenage human being, however, that is an unreasonable expectation. Changing one’s interests, opinions and presentation is a natural part of adolescence and an instructive one. I find that my students with scattershot résumés are often the most confident. They’re not afraid to push back against suggestions that ring false and will insist on revising their essay until it actually “feels like me.” On the other hand, many of my most accomplished students are so quick to accept feedback that I am wary of offering it, lest I become one more adult trying to shape them into an admission-worthy ideal.

I understand that for parents, prioritizing exploration can feel like a risky bet. Self-insight is hard to quantify and to communicate in a college application. When it comes to building a life, however, this kind of knowledge has more value than any accolade, and it cannot be generated through a brainstorming exercise in a six-step personal branding course online. To equip kids for the world, we need to provide them not just with opportunities for achievement, but with opportunities to fail, to learn, to wander and to change their minds.

In some ways, the college essay is a microcosm of modern adolescence. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either a forum for self-discovery or a high-stakes test you need to ace. I try to assure my students that it is the former. I tell them that it’s a chance to take stock of everything you’ve experienced and learned over the past 18 years and everything you have to offer as a result.

That can be a profound process. But to embark on it, students have to believe that colleges really want to see the person behind the brand. And they have to have the chance to know who that person is.

Sarah Bernstein is a playwright, a writing coach and an essayist.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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