6.30530 · Section 6: The international world

Tourism at home and abroad

Key learnings

Tourism & accommodation vocabulary
Tourism vocabulary clusters into reusable sets (full table in the note): unas vacaciones (holiday), un viaje (trip), una excursión (day trip), el alojamiento (accommodation), un hotel / un albergue (juvenil) / un camping, una habitación individual/doble, reservar (to book), con desayuno incluido, ¿Tiene una habitación libre? Alojamiento and albergue are named in the digest as vocabulary gaps — learn them as a pair.
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Preterite for events, imperfect for scene
A past-trip description mixes two tenses:
- Preterite — the completed events: reservé un hotel, llegamos, visitamos el museo, compramos recuerdos.
- Imperfect — background, weather, ongoing or habitual states: hacía calor, el hotel era cómodo, desayunábamos en la terraza.
Set the scene in the imperfect, then narrate what happened in the preterite: Hacía sol y el hotel era precioso, así que decidimos quedarnos.

Common mistakes

Drawn from real examiner reports.

Preterite vs imperfect in a trip

The digest names this confusion in trip narration:

Wrong: Durante la excursión visitaba un museo. → a completed visit needs the preterite: visité un museo (visitaba = "used to visit").
Wrong: El sábado pasado iba a una tienda. → fui a una tienda.

Rule: a finished occasion (ayer, el sábado pasado) → preterite; background or habit → imperfect.

(s23 P41; w23 P41)

Do not drop hace from time phrases

Time expressions with hace ("ago") are often malformed — candidates write a bare number:

Wrong: 100 años alone. Correct: hace 100 años.
Also: hace unos días, hace casi medio siglo — never drop hace.

For trips: Fuimos de vacaciones hace dos semanas is correct; Fuimos de vacaciones dos semanas is not a valid "ago" phrase.

(s23 P21 Q6a; s23 P22 Q4b)

Know alojamiento and albergue

The digest names alojamiento and albergue as words weaker candidates do not know:

alojamiento = accommodation (somewhere to stay).
albergue (juvenil) = (youth) hostel — cheaper, distinct from un hotel or un camping.

Learn the accommodation set together: hotel, albergue, camping, apartamento, pensión.

(s22 RP6)

Preterite of ser/ir: fui, not fue

Ser and ir share the same preterite, and the first person is fui, not fue (which is 3rd person):

Yo fui de vacaciones a Grecia. (not Yo fue)
El viaje fue estupendo. (3rd person → fue)

Avoid invented forms like fuiemos, fuieron, tuvía; the plurals are fuimos, fueron. This person slip is on the common-errors list every sitting.

(s23 P41 Q3a)

Accents on preterite yo-forms

Regular preterite yo forms carry a written accent on the final vowel; dropping it is penalised under Accuracy:

compré, jugué, reservé, visité — the accent marks the past (reservo = I book vs reservé = I booked).
But vi and di take no accent (ví, dí are wrong).

Do not add stray accents either — fuí, sácamos are flagged errors.

(s23 P41; s23 P42)

por vs para in travel

por and para are an explicit Q3 accuracy item:

por = through / along / duration: viajamos por España, dormimos por ocho horas.
para = destination / purpose: salimos para la costa, un regalo para mi madre.

The digest flags duermo por 8 horas (most wrongly wrote para). Ask: motion-through/duration (por) or goal/destination (para)?

(s23 P42 Task 4)

Preterite ≠ imperfect (different jobs)

Preterite and imperfect are not interchangeable — they do different jobs:

visité un museo = one finished visit; visitaba = a repeated/ongoing habit, wrong for a single dated event.
The imperfect is not only for weather: it also covers ongoing states (el hotel era cómodo), ages and times.

Test: if "on that occasion" fits, use the preterite.

Exam tips

Prepare the booking request pattern
Learn the fixed opening — ¿Tiene una habitación libre? / Quisiera reservar... — then specify room type and dates: una habitación doble, del 3 al 10 de agosto, con desayuno incluido. Numbers, dates and currency are flagged as weak, so rehearse them aloud.
Match the question word to your answer
Listen for the question category: cuándo (when → date/time), cuánto (how much → price), dónde (where → place with a preposition). Answering the wrong one — a price when asked cuándo — is the single most repeated Speaking error in the digest.
Narrate: preterite events, imperfect place
In the Writing task, narrate the booking and stay with the preterite for the events (reservé, llegamos, nos alojamos) and the imperfect for describing the place (el hotel era..., había una piscina). Add a subordinate clause (porque, cuando) to lift the Range mark.

Revision notes