We’ve had a great Friday at our clases de Español. We started with some welcome songs, our new students are getting familiarized with them and we need to keep on practicing.

We also started learning vocabulary of school objects we use daily, like:

mapa/map, lapiz/pencil, cuaderno/notebook, libro/book, goma/eraser, sacapuntas, sharpener, crayones/crayons, pluma/pen, regla/ruler, hoja de papel/piece of paper, tijeras/scissors, pegamento/glue, mochila/backpack. We practiced our colors by identifying the color of the school objects.  Older students also practiced some opposites, Arriba-abajo, (open-close) abrir-cerrar (open-close), etc. When we heard the word Largo (long), many students thought that it meant Large, a great guess but wrong word. We learned about cognates and false cognates (words that have a common etymological origin). Then we talked that cognates are words that we can easily understand because their spelling and meaning is the same or similar to a word we already know in our first language. For example: “gratitude” in English, means the same as “gratitud” in Spanish. Or “cafe” in Greek is just the same as “café” in Spanish. One student pointed out that he understood grande because it has the same meaning in Italian.  We read a few words from a list of hundreds of cognates. Students were quite surprised to find out that there are over a thousand. Who knew we already know so many Spanish words!

 If you are interested on this list yourself, I invite you to check it out at:

 https://www.realfastspanish.com/vocabulary/spanish-cognates

 As a teacher and a second language learner myself, I firmly believed that we learn a foreign language faster by being exposed to it without getting stressed over the features of grammar. We learn it in ‘chunks’, – words, collocations and expressions that we hear repeatedly. It is easy for beginners to train their ears to hear it, then we start with single word naming (ex. baño -bathroom) then 2-3 word sentences (ex. baño por favor! -bathroom please) then more complex sentences, that they may say with or without grammatical errors.  (ex. Puedo ir al baño por favor?-may I go to the bathroom please?). This is how we work in our Spanish classes at Plato Academy.

We will soon be celebrating The Hispanic Heritage Month, stay connected to hear all about it.

Have a great weekend.

Soraya Castro