Cognate Activity for Spanish and English
Cognates are words that are similar, or even identical in two different languages. Spanish and English share many cognates. Some examples are restaurant/restaurante, wifi/wifi, class/clase and the list goes on! Knowing these cognates is a great way for students to jump start their understanding of Spanish. I have found that students are more likely to pick up on cognates if you give them a lesson on what they are and have them start finding them in the class. I developed an activity to help put this into practice.
There are hundreds of cognates from English to Spanish and I think it’s fun for students to find as many as they can over the course of the year. I bring the class to the rug and have a bag or container that’s already prepared with lots of cognate words inside for my older classes. If you want my cogante cards you can find them here or use my list at the end to make your own. I find it’s more successful to use the words not pictures for my 3rd-6th grade classes. My K-2nd grade uses mix of pictures and words. I have one student come up pull out a word and do their best to read it in Spanish or I help them read it if they are not comfortable reading in Spanish.
Then somebody else has to guess what the word is in English. They are usually pretty good at guessing the correct word. When they hear león lots of hands go up ready to guess lion. Then right then and there I start making a cognate list with them. I’ll explain what a cognate is and make a cognate chart with cognado as the title with one side labeled inglés and the other side labeled español. I add lion and león to the list we keep choosing cognates with probably around 15 words but really depends on how much engagement they have.
Each time I add the new word to our list. Then I explain that as we continue learning Spanish they are going to hear more cognate words and we are going to keep track of all the cogates we can find. Usually right away they pick on hearing me say excelente or atención and want to add those words to our list right away. From then on whenever we come across cognates either they point them out to me or I kind of coax them into hearing the similarities. At the end of the semester I type the list and give them the list a copy of the cognates to show them how many words they know just using the English that they already know.
I will add that it takes dedication to build this list because when they find the cognates it is best to add them to the list right away before you forget. At a different time I talk to my class about false cognates, usually after someone points one out as a cognate. For example sopa is not soap and a vestido is not a vest. It is important that they know not all words that sound similar mean the same thing.
I have noticed that they years I incorporated this lesson and cognate list in my classroom students picked up on cognates way more than years I chose not to do this. I hope you guys have fun trying out this activity let me know if you use my cards how they helped your class.
Here is list of some English/Spanish cognates in case you want to make your own cards.
- accident/accidente
- alarm/alarma
- artist/artísta
- banana/banana
- camera/cámara
- capital/capital
- cereal/cereal
- class/clase
- color/color
- directions/direcciones
- dragon/dragón
- family/familia
- fruit/fruta
- history/historia
- hospital/hospital
- information/informatión
- lemon/limón
- list/lista
- memory/memoria
- minute/minuto
- music/música
- ocean/océano
- patience/paciencia
- perfume/perfume
- photo/foto
- piano/piano
- restaurant/restaurante
- television/televisión
- traffic/tráfico
- wifi/wifi
Here are some more beginning of the year resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers.
