Esperanto

A few days ago, Alexandra and Melissa gave our class a worksheet with phrases in Esperanto. I was happy to see that, on that specific sheet, I was able to decipher 9 out of 10 of those phrases! It's amazing how motivating it is to be able to use your knowledge of other languages to decipher a language that you've never seen before!

While I have always tried to emphasize the importance of motivation and confidence building in the language classroom, this activity reiterated the need to activate prior knowledge as much as possible. While I was teaching, one of the first lessons I would do in my Spanish I/Intro to Spanish classes was to teach the kids about cognates. While there are a lot of false cognates that can confuse a second language learner, seeing words that are familiar can be comforting to those who are uneasy with languages. It also demonstrates the similarity of words between languages.

I know that, personally, recognizing words in Esperanto was pretty exciting. I'm actually on an Esperanto website right now :)