English mistakes Spanish-speaking kids make

'I have five years': age, feelings and be

Spanish uses tener for age and many feelings: «Tengo cinco años», «tengo hambre», «tengo frío». Translated, that's 'I have five years', 'I have hungry' and 'I have cold'. English uses be: I'm five, I'm hungry, I'm cold. These are the first sentences children say about themselves, so fix them early, as chunks.

• How old are you? with a ball: the catcher answers 'I'm six!' with six fingers up. The word years never gets the ball.
• Feelings charades: a child acts hungry, cold, tired or thirsty; the class guesses with 'You're hungry!' and the child answers 'Yes, I'm hungry!' Every guess is a chunk with be.

'Is raining': the missing subject

Spanish can drop the subject because the verb ending already says who: «Llueve», «Es mi cumpleaños», «Es muy grande». English never can, and when there is no real subject it brings in it: 'It's raining', 'It's my birthday', 'It's very big'. Children say 'Is raining', 'Is my birthday' and 'Is very big', and later 'Am happy' or 'Like pizza'.

• Mr It: a puppet (a sock will do) called It who must appear in every weather report. 'It's sunny!' He pops up on It's; with no It, the sentence doesn't count.
• Weather reporter: each day one child presents the weather at the window: 'It's cloudy. It's cold.' A daily two-sentence routine with it in every sentence.

'A dog big', 'the bigs dogs': adjectives

In Spanish the adjective usually follows the noun (un perro grande, una pelota roja) and agrees with it in number (los perros grandes). Children carry both habits across: 'a dog big', 'a ball red', and then 'the bigs dogs' or 'reds balls'. In English the adjective goes first and never changes.

• Colour first: a chant where the colour jumps in front, 'red ball, blue bag, green frog', and then you say 'ball red' on purpose for the class to fix.
• The adjective has no pocket: noun cards have a little pocket for an s card; adjective cards don't. Children build phrases with cards (two / big / dog / s) and find that the s only fits on the dog.
• Word order on screen: the Sentence Factory's build mode puts word tiles in order, which is exactly this drill.

'People is', 'the life is beautiful': nouns and articles

«La gente» is singular in Spanish, so 'people is' feels right; in English people is plural: people are. And Spanish uses the article to talk about things in general: «La vida es bella», «Me gustan los perros». Translated, that's 'The life is beautiful' and 'I like the dogs' (meaning all dogs). English talks about things in general with no article: life is beautiful, I like dogs.

• People are a crowd: whenever people comes up, three children stand together as a crowd. A crowd is more than one, so it gets are.
• Like-it survey: 'Do you like dogs? Do you like pizza?' The answers come without the. The is for things you can point at: 'The dog in the picture is big.'

'Explain me', 'more big' and 'I don't have nothing'

Three small translations. «Explícame» and «dime» put me straight after the verb, so children say 'Explain me the game' and 'Say me'; English says 'Explain the game to me' and 'Tell me'. «Más grande» gives 'more big' and 'more tall', while short adjectives take -er: bigger, taller. And Spanish happily stacks negatives («No tengo nada»), so 'I don't have nothing' sounds right. English allows only one: I don't have anything, or I have nothing.

• Taller than: two children back to back; the class says 'Ana is taller than Leo', stretching up on taller. Any 'more tall' gets a friendly 'Hmm?' and a second try.
• Tell me, show me: a quick Simon says with 'Tell me your name', 'Show me a pencil', 'Give the pencil to me'. Children hear me in its English places dozens of times.
• One no only: a child looks into an empty bag and says 'I have nothing!' or 'I don't have anything!' Two noes and the bag stays shut.

Sounds: 'espeak', ship or sheep, and h

No Spanish word begins with s plus a consonant (España, escuela, estrella), so speak becomes 'espeak' and school 'eschool'. Spanish has five vowels and no long/short pairs, so ship and sheep, sit and seat sound alike. Spanish h is silent and Spanish j is rough, so house comes out as 'ouse' or with a harsh j. And Spanish b and v are one sound, which is why berry and very need their own lab.

• Snake start: begin speak, school and star with a long hiss, sssss-peak, and shorten it until it sticks. While the snake hisses, no e can sneak in.
• Arms wide, fingers pinched: arms stretch wide for the long sound in sheep and seat, fingers pinch for the short one in ship and sit. Then a pair race: you say one, children show which.
• Warm hands for h: h is breath on cold hands, soft and quiet. Children 'warm their hands' on hat, hen and house; a scratchy j is far too rough to warm anything.

Vocabulary traps and your curriculum

False friends (embarazada is not embarrassed, carpeta is not carpet) have their own article with the kid-safe dozen. If you teach in Spain or Mexico, the LOMLOE and SEP guide maps the primary themes onto free packs and covers the b/v and ch/sh labs in detail. And for the correcting itself: echo, don't lecture.