Blog #5

The journal that I read had to do with cognates and how cognates can be used to help new students to a foreign language or students who are struggling. It explains how cognates can make anyone read in Spanish. Meaning even if it’s a Spanish one class if the Reading has enough cognates students will be able to comprehend what the reading is about. The author described it as “puzzle reading”. Puzzle reading basically means that if students uses the cognates and pieces them together they can get the overall view of what the article was about. After all comprehension is one of the main goals a Spanish learner has to meet. Some classroom strategies the article talked about was “reading aloud”, the teacher reads an article out loud slowly and when the students think they hear a cognate they say “stop” and they go over what the cognate is or if it’s a false cognate. Another strategy discussed in this reading is “student reading” which means that the students read an article then they circle or underline what they think is a cognate then the whole class discusses the answers. Some activities mention in the reading is “Word sort” this activity consist of pairing up students and giving one student a set of card’s in English and the other student a set of card’s in Spanish and then they have to work together in order to match up the cognates. And lastly the Article talked about false cognates and how it is important to tell students that false cognates do exist so that they don’t think that every word that sound or looks the same is a cognate.

My opinion on this topic is pretty much the same as the article I believe that cognates are a very useful tool for students who have trouble reading the targeted language and even for more experienced learners like myself. I still look for cognates when I read in Spanish. If I don’t understand what a word means in Spanish I look at it and see if it looks like any word in English and usually it does so I get a general idea of what the word means. So I do believe that cognates are a good tool to teach Spanish. As for the article I think that the strategies discussed might sound like common sense like “reading out loud” but I think sometimes the most common sense strategies are the best.