Cognates


 * This is a great activity for the first week of school. I did this in my classroom and the students loved it! (I did it in German, but I know that there are cognates in many languages)!**

I. For this lesson I made the students take notes on what a cognate was first (perfect and false cognates - you can get a definition in English at [|dictionary.com]). II. Then we went through some flashcards of cognates and I said each word out loud (this was some of their first exposer to German pronunciation and they liked to see the difference between the way it would be said in English and how it was pronounced in German). III. The students guessed each word (some are harder than others). (we went through them twice). This was also a great time to show them some tricks to figuring out German words i.e. if you replace d's and t's the word can look closer to English. IV. Finally we went over false cognates. I asked them to remember what a false cognate was first. Then we went through each flash card (I said the word and they guessed). This was really fun because some of the false cognates are really funny in German (i.e. Gift = poison and there are tourist shops in Michigan that say "Das Gift Haus" which means "The House of Poison"). The students loved this. V. At the very end (we reviewed the next day as well) I told them that they just learned about thirty German words in two days. They were really proud of themselves and it helped to get them interested in learning more of the language.

__Cognates I used in German:__ die Diskette * installiern * braun * aus Silber * blau * der Salat * die Firma * das Buch * das Haus * der Bruder * die Lampe * der Supermarkt * die Socken * schwimmen * die Brezel * das Bett * der Fuss * der Schuh * der Fisch das Feder * die Schulter * die Inbox * das Internet * der Server * der Scanner * die Butter * der Ring * joggen der Finger * der Arm * die Cola * die Web-site * der Browser * die Email * das Modem * die Hardware * die Banane das Radio * die Shorts * die Vase * die Hand * die Jeans

__False Cognates:__ das Bad * toll * arm * der Funk * das Rat * der Rock * der Hut * das Gift * rot * hell (not bad in German) * der Lump

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adapted from Mary Jo Baker