For this conversation you’ll need to make sure you know: Greetings (based on the time of day), how to ask someone’s name (since these are your classmates you won’t be using the formal usted) and how to answer the question “¿Cómo estás?”

There are three common greetings in the hispanic world: Buenos días, buenas tardes and buenas noches. Your greeting will change depending on the time of day you’re having this conversation, with buenos días being used in the morning, buenas tardes being used in the afternoon and buenas noches being used-as a greeting- in the evening/night time.

¿Cómo te llamas? is the standard phrase for asking “What is your name”?, and since we’re conversing with fellow classmates, we won’t be using the formal usted. Out of politeness, maybe you should choose to introduce yourself first, in which case you would say “Me llamo (insert name). ¿Cómo te llamas?” Soy (insert name) is also an appropriate, albeit less formal way to introduce yourself, literally, “I’m (insert name)”.

To ask a classmate or friend how they are doing in a general sense, we say “¿Cómo estás?” or more informally “¿Qué tal?”, literally “What’s up?”

While there are many ways to answer this question, and you’ll learn more in coming chapters, the 4 answers we know at this point are: estoy bien, estoy regular, estoy mal, and más o menos. Bien means “good”, regular is the somewhat literal translation of “all right” and mal translates as “bad”, or not so good.

Finally, leave your partner with an ¡adios!