Question 1

Why is viejo placed after maestro here?

Accepted Answer

In Spanish, placing adjectives like viejo after the noun gives them their literal, physical meaning. Here, el maestro viejo means a teacher who is old in age. If we placed it before the noun (el viejo maestro), the meaning shifts to "a longtime teacher," even if that person happens to be young!

Question 2

What would the sentence mean if we used the imperfect tense, evaluaba, instead?

Accepted Answer

The preterite tense evaluó shows that the evaluation was a single, completed action in the past. If you used the imperfect evaluaba, it would mean the teacher "used to evaluate" the choreography repeatedly, or that he "was evaluating" it in the background when something else happened.

Question 3

Why does evaluó have an accent mark on the final letter?

Accepted Answer

The verb is evaluar (to evaluate). In the preterite (simple past) tense, regular -ar verbs take an -ó ending for the third-person singular (he/she/it). The accent mark shows that the spoken stress falls heavily on that final vowel, which prevents it from sounding like the present tense evalúo (I evaluate).

Question 4

Is there a trick to remembering the spelling and pronunciation of coreografía?

Accepted Answer

Yes! The English suffix -graphy almost always translates to -grafía in Spanish. You will see this exact same pattern in words like fotografía (photography) and geografía (geography). The written accent on the í is required to break up the vowel blend so that you emphasize the i.

El maestro viejo evaluó la coreografía.

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