GCSE Spanish Vocabulary: School and Work

The reformed GCSE in Spanish (first exams in 2026) builds every paper from a defined vocabulary list of about 1,200 word families at Foundation tier and a further 500 at Higher tier. School and work come up in all four skills: a reading text about school rules, a listening extract about a part-time job, a role-play in a shop or office, a writing task about your plans for the future. This material covers the words of the topic Education and work, part of the first theme, People and lifestyle, in the structure used, for example, by AQA; other boards place the same vocabulary under their own topic titles.

The quiz tests the words the way the exam does, in context. Most questions give you a short Spanish sentence and ask what a word means in it: aprobar and, at Higher tier, suspender (a false friend that means to fail), el recreo, una carrera studied at university, una empresa, estar en paro, una entrevista, ganar un salario and las reglas of a school. The last two questions ask you to choose the Spanish word for timetable and, at Higher tier, for applying for a job, from words that are easily confused.

The twenty-four flashcards give the Spanish, with the article, and the English: types of school, subjects, timetable, break, uniform, rules, homework, marks, passing and failing, learning and teaching, pupils and students, university and degree courses, work and employment, companies, bosses and employees, salary, interviews, applying for a job, unemployment and several jobs. Higher-only words are marked.

The written sheet practises recall in both directions, a translation each way, a gap-fill, a short paragraph about your school and another about your plans for the future, and an explanation of the false friends of this topic. The model answers give a correct version and the key points a marker would check, including the time frames that a writing task rewards.

Learn the cards in both directions, use the quiz to check you understand the words in sentences, and then write the two paragraphs: they are the kind of answer you will need in the photo card conversation and in the writing paper.

• Recognise and use the GCSE Spanish vocabulary for school subjects, timetable, rules and exams
• Distinguish aprobar and suspender and other false friends of the topic
• Use the vocabulary of jobs, companies, salary, interviews and unemployment
• Talk about future studies and careers with the near future and me gustaría
• Understand topic words in the context of a sentence

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