About this activity
Twelve items sorted into grupo completo and reducido: plato, blusa, flor, tren, grande and cruz are the full clusters; pato, busa, for, ten, gande and cuz are the reduced versions. Reducción de sílabas trabadas is one of the most common phonological processes in Spanish, and putting the two versions side by side makes the omitted consonant audible.
How to use it in a session
Say both versions and let the student sort them. Hearing plato against pato is the whole lesson, and the reduced version being a real word — pato means duck — makes the consequence concrete. Then have the student produce both deliberately, since being able to reduce on purpose usually means the full cluster is under control. Ten minutes covers the twelve.
What to listen for
Listen for which consonant is dropped. In Spanish clusters the liquid — the l or the r — is the one usually lost, giving pato for plato and gande for grande, which matches the pattern in English. Watch tren and cruz, where the r follows a stop and the cluster is at the start of the word, since those are the ones that persist longest.
Carrying it home
Plato, flor and grande are everyday words in a Spanish-speaking home. Asking which one the child said, when plato comes out as pato, gives the same feedback the sorting is designed to produce.
Questions
- Is this board in Spanish?
- Yes, all the words are Spanish. This page is in English so an English-speaking clinician can find and evaluate it.
- Do I need an account?
- No, it plays free in the browser.
- Is cluster reduction normal in Spanish?
- In young children, yes — it is a typical early pattern in Spanish as it is in English. It becomes a target when it persists past the age most children have outgrown it.