My Embarrassing False Cognate Experience

I grew up speaking English with my family.  When I was in the seventh grade, I chose to study Spanish as my foreign language requirement for graduation.  During my senior year at Ward Melville High School, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in teaching Spanish.  After graduating from high school, I went to SUNY Cortland and majored in Adolescent Education in Spanish.  While in my junior year there, I decided to study abroad in Salamanca, Spain.  While I was studying Spanish there, I lived with a family.  I had my own room in their apartment, where I slept and would eat three meals a day with Beni, my host mother and José, my host father.  One morning, I woke up late for class.  I got dressed quickly, grabbed my bag and headed out the door.  As I was hurrying down the street, I dropped my notebook.  Some very nice strangers helped me gather my papers.  After saying thank you, I began walking quickly in what I thought was the direction of school.  After a couple of blocks, I realized I was heading in the wrong direction and that I was going to arrive even later to class.  When I finally reached my school, I ran up the stairs and arrived at my classroom.  As I was rushing up the stairs, I was rehearsing what I was going to say to apologize to my professor.  I knew I wanted to say I was sorry and that I was embarrassed for being late.  As I sprung open the door, I announced "Lo siento, estoy embarasada."  What I had intended to say was that I was sorry and embarrassed for being late.  I received a very strange grin from my teacher and a few weird looks form my classmates.  As I found a seat, another American student leaned over to me and said "Doesn't embarasada mean pregnant?" Instead of saying I was embarrassed, I announced to the whole class that I was pregnant.  Now, I was really embarrassed!  This is an example of a false cognate.  A false cognate is a word in one language that looks or sounds like a word in another language and has a DIFFERENT meaning.  Cognates are words that sound or look alike and have the SAME meaning.

Vocabulary:
1) requirement: something that you have to do
2) pursue: choosing to do or follow something
3) graduating: completing high school
4) majored: what you choose to study in college
5) gather: to bring to together, collect
6) blocks: parts of streets, from one corner to another

Cloze Activity: Fill in the following blanks with one of the above vocabulary words.
1) The school is four ___________ away from my house.
2) You must complete the foreign language _____________ in order to graduate.
3) Please ___________ your belongings and meet me in the office.
4) After _____________ from high school, the students will continue to college.
5) While in the college, the teacher ____________ in education.
6) The student wants to ____________ a career in politics.


Grammar Point- The Present Progressive:
The present progressive is a way to express something that is occurring in the moment, or happening right now.  To form verbs in the present progressive, you must add -ing to the end of the word.  For example, the verb graduating is the verb graduate plus the ending -ing.

Grammar Exercise:
Write the following verbs in the present progressive:

1) Follow _________________
2) Study __________________
3) Learn __________________
4) Reach __________________
5) Speak __________________