Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
Classroom Activities with Spanish-English Cognates
by
José A. Montelongo, Ph.D.
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
[email protected]
(805) 540-1317
Anita Hernández, Ph.D.
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
[email protected]
(805) 756-5537
Paper presented at
CATESOL Annual Conference 2010
in
Santa Clara, California
April 22-25, 2010
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
Classroom Activities with Spanish English Cognates
Latino English Language Learners (ELLs) enter United States classrooms with
rich Spanish language backgrounds. Since Spanish shares much of its etymology with
English as a result of its historical Latin and Greek foundations, there are many words—
cognates—in Spanish and English that closely resemble each other orthographically and
semantically. English/Spanish word pairs such as “natural/natural,” “concept/concepto,”
and “rice/arroz” are examples of cognates. There are at least 20,000 Spanish-English
cognates in the English language and many are among the most frequently used words in
the English language (Johnson, 1941; Montelongo, 2002).
Educators have long been aware that cognates rank among the easiest vocabulary
words for language students to acquire (Doyle 1926; Garrison, 1990; Lado 1957;
Rodríguez, 2001). They have argued for the inclusion of cognate words as part of the
language curriculum because of the resemblance to English words. Spanish-English
cognates can be used to help Latino English Language Learners make connections
between English and Spanish words to comprehend text. Latino ELLs can guess the
meanings of English words from their knowledge of Spanish-English suffix regularities.
A word in Spanish that ends in "-ción" (e.g., "compensación) can be translated as its
English equivalent "-tion" (compensation).
Spanish-English cognates are not automatically recognized by students (Nagy,
Garcia, Durgunoglu, and Hancin-Bhatt, 1993). Part of this is due to the fact that Spanish
and English cognate equivalents are not always obvious. For example, while EnglishSpanish pairs such as “hospital/hospital” and “suppression/supresión,” are obvious
cognates, pairs such as “eagle/aguila” and “rice/arroz” are not (Montelongo, Hernández,
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
Herter, and Hernández, 2009; 2010). Explicit instruction on the recognition of cognates
has been shown to be successful in the case of struggling readers (Jiménez & Gámez,
1996).
Classroom Activities with Cognates
Language teachers have presented classroom activities to teach students about
cognates. Concept induction exercises that capitalize on the morphological regularities
that exist between English root words and affixes and their Spanish equivalents have
been used to teach students how to generate rule-governed cognates or approximations to
cognates that can inform their comprehension of text (Garrison, 1990; Hancin-Bhatt and
Nagy, 1994; Johnson, 1941). At word level, Gallegos, Rodríguez, and Cole (1979)
encouraged the practice of students’ highlighting cognates in particular reading passages.
Thonis (1983) recommended that students maintain a cognate notebook categorized
according to similarities and that teachers play word games utilizing cognates with their
students. Similarly, Williams (2001) suggested the creation and maintenance of cognate
dictionaries and advocated the display of cognate walls inside the classroom.
Cognates, Context Clues, Similes, Metaphors, and Analogies
Teachers can also help Latino ELLs take advantage of their rich linguistic
background by using cognates to scaffold the acquisition of various reading strategies
subsumed under the general using-the-context umbrella. While teachers have always
taught students to use context clues to guess at the meanings of unknown, conflating
context clues with cognates is a new approach to meeting the needs of ELL readers
Montelongo, Hernández, Herter, and Cuello (in preparation). Through this new strategy,
Latino ELL readers learn to discern the meaning of unknown English words through
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
Spanish-English cognates, thereby increasing the size of their English vocabulary.
Teaching students this useful strategy in tandem with their knowledge of cognates can
enhance their meaning-making capabilities. They can be taught to look for cognates in
sentences before and after the unknown word for synonyms, antonyms, definitions,
examples, appositive words or phrases, and punctuation. For example, in the following
sentence, students can enlist their knowledge of Spanish to guess the meaning of the verb,
“gather,” by recognizing that “collect” (coleccionar, in Spanish) is used in the same way:
The Indian children gather the olives. They collect these small fruits for use in
cooking.
Other meaning-making strategies can be developed through cognates. The ability
to understand figurative language is important for English-language learners (ELLs) who
can become frustrated by an inability to comprehend them (Avalos, Plasencia, Chávez,
Rascón, 2007; Dong, 2004; Palmer and Brooks, 2004). Teachers can use cognates to
scaffold the understanding of similes and metaphors by using cognates to teach them
what similes and metaphors are and by reinforcing classroom instruction with exercises
that include obvious cognates exclusively (Montelongo, in preparation). Similes are used
to show how two things are alike using the terms, “like,” and “as.” “The idea was like a
pearl,” is a simile. Metaphors are like similes, but do not use the terms, “like” and “as.”
“The idea was a pearl,” is a metaphor. In the examples, the words, “idea (idea, in
Spanish)” and “pearl (perla, in Spanish),” are cognates.
Beginning in the early elementary grades, reading teachers at all grade levels are
charged with providing their students with instruction on the different types of analogies.
Analogy activities promote higher order thinking. Cognitive psychologists suggest that
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
analogical thinking is important for being able to understand the world, solve problems,
construct explanations, and build arguments (Gentner and Holyoak, 1997). Many of the
greatest scientific theories have been attributed to scientists who used analogies to
conceptualize their scientific laws as pointed out by Lemmon (1937):
“Many anecdotes concerning the formulation of scientific laws describe the man
of science as witnessing a familiar event which suddenly suggests to him the
universal and necessary character of certain relations apparent in the event.
Archimedes lying in the tub, Newton under the apple tree, Bradley in the sailboat, Thales observing a man’s shadow, Watt with his tea-kettle, all—if the
stories are credible—grasped the relation in the objects before them as obtaining
in all similar situations.” (p. 306)
Analogy instruction is one method for developing analytical thinking about
transferring the attributes of a relationship that is familiar to one that is unfamiliar (King
and Shaw, 1986). The analogy activities in reading textbooks teach a form of reasoning
that captures the abstract relationship between two pairs of words. Analogies are most
often written in the form, a:b::c:d, which is read as: a is to b, as c is to d. For example, the
relationship between “camera” and “photograph” may be considered analogous to the
relationship between “computer” and “document” since a “camera” produces a
“photograph” and a “computer” produces a “document.” All four of the terms are
cognates: “camera/cámara, photograph/fotografía, computer/computadora,
document/documento.” The relationship between “camera” and “photograph,” and that of
“computer” and “document” may be written as: camera:photograph::computer:document
and is read as, “camera is to photograph as computer is to document.”
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
There are different uses for analogies. Content area teachers utilize analogies to
develop important concepts in their disciplines, as well as to make connections of ideas
across the curriculum (Huff-Benkoski and Greenwood, 1995). Analogies are also used to
develop vocabulary (Ignoffo, 1980). Teachers can encourage their students to think
critically and creatively through analogies.
Teachers can ensure that Latino English Language Learners understand and use
analogies. As was the case with similes and metaphors, teachers can use Spanish-English
cognates in their teaching activities to provide Latino ELLs with the opportunity to
understand what analogies are and comprehend what they mean (Montelongo, Herter,
Hernández, and Cuello, in preparation).
Conclusion
Strategies that build upon the linguistic strengths of Spanish-speaking students
should be encouraged and cultivated. Latino English Language Learners come to U.S.
classrooms with rich linguistic backgrounds. We have presented teachers, both
monolingual and bilingual, with ideas for developing ELLs’ meaning-making strategies
by tapping into their knowledge of Spanish-English cognates. Teaching students to
recognize though morphological relationships or word walls are effective ways for
increasing students’ vocabularies. Employing Spanish-English cognates to teach context
clues, similes and metaphors, and analogies for meaning-making, further demonstrates
the power of language to enhance reading comprehension for all students.
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Montelongo and Hernández Cognate Activities
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