I use Megan’s cognate practice for my level one classes. For level two and three, I like to “up the level” for them!
The goal slide is meant to be a little funny. They will freak a little bit, and then I will promise them that it is possible. This site has a great list of cognates: Spanish Cognates.
Put students in groups. Give them magazines, newspapers, flyers, Internet articles, etc. in the target language. Give each group one cognate page. They will cut out cognates and glue them on the page. Hang up the pages around the room. If you don’t want them to cut them, they can just write out the words.
Now ask students to walk around and figure out the “rules” for the cognates. They can write them on a “Cognados” note sheet. This is when they will start seeing the patterns and be able to create some on their own.
The link for spanishcognates.org is not working. Did you miss a piece of the link? I was going to do something similar with a document that I’ve been working on. Is there a way that I can share here?
Gracias!
C.
Thanks! Something must be acting up. I had trouble getting some other links to work too. The link is http://www.spanishcognates.org and it is organized pretty well. I clicked on the “endings” tab. I think there is enough there to use for upper levels too.
You can share by linking to your own site, putting it on creativelanguageclass.wikispaces.com (and letting people know), or email us to put it up.
I like the idea of leveling up with the advanced learners… but I’m not entirely clear on what you mean by the “rules” for the cognates. Could you explain that a little more? Merci bien!
Sure! In Spanish there is a “rule” that you can take a word that ends with -dad and change it to -ty and the word is in English. It works most of the time. UniDAD = uniTY, universiDAD = universiTY. I know French has them, so you can google for it.
Awesome lesson plan! When you talk about having students create their own cognates and creating 100 words, do they create words and check look them up to see if they are correct? Or do they just follow the rule and create some new words, not worrying if they are real words in the Spanish language or not?
Either way would work well.
I just learned that there are over 25,000 Spanish/English cognates. I need to change the goal!