GCSE Spanish Vocabulary: Relationships and Healthy Living

Every question in the reformed GCSE in Spanish (first exams in 2026) is built from a defined vocabulary list: about 1,200 word families at Foundation tier and a further 500 at Higher tier, chosen mainly for how often they are used in Spanish. Knowing these words well, in both directions, is the single biggest help across listening, reading, speaking, writing and translation. This material covers the words you need for the first theme, People and lifestyle, in two of its topics: identity and relationships with others, and healthy living and lifestyle. (It takes AQA's theme structure and vocabulary list as its example; other boards group the same words under different topic titles.)

The quiz asks for meaning in context, the way the reading and listening papers do. Most questions give you a short Spanish sentence, such as a remark about a stepfather, a cousin's wedding or a headache that started in the morning, and ask what one word or the whole sentence means. Others ask you to pick the right Spanish word for an English meaning from a set of related words, like enfermo, enfermedad and enfermero. The explanations point out the false friends that cost marks, such as gracioso (funny) and molestar (to annoy), and how me duele works like me gusta.

The twenty-six flashcards give the Spanish word, with its article, on the front and the meaning on the back: family and step-family, partners and marriage, getting on and arguing, support, respect and trust, personality adjectives, health, illness and pain, sleep, diet, smoking, weight, stress and rest. Words that belong only to the Higher-tier list are marked Higher.

The written sheet practises the words actively: recall in both directions, a short translation each way, a gap-fill, a description of someone you know, a paragraph about your own lifestyle, and an explanation of how related words differ. Model answers show a correct version and the points a marker would look for.

Start with the flashcards in both directions, then use the quiz to check that you recognise the words inside sentences. Finish with the written sheet, especially the two short paragraphs, which prepare you for the photo card and the writing tasks.

• Recognise and produce the GCSE Spanish vocabulary for family, step-family and relationships
• Describe personality with adjectives that agree with the person described
• Use the vocabulary of health, illness, pain, diet and lifestyle, including me duele
• Avoid the false friends gracioso and molestar
• Understand topic words in the context of a sentence, as in the reading and listening papers

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE modern foreign languages subject content (2022) and on the Theme 1 topics and Spanish vocabulary list in AQA's GCSE Spanish specification (8692, version 1.0, Appendix 2), used here as an example. The sentences are original.