About this activity
Fourteen Spanish words with an /l/ cluster: blusa, blanco and bloque for bl; clavo, clase and clima for cl; flor, flaco and flecha for fl; globo and glotón for gl; plato, playa and pluma for pl. Sílabas trabadas are where the second consonant is most often dropped in Spanish, exactly as in English.
How to use it in a session
Say the two consonants separately and then close the gap. The reduced version is often a real word — plato becomes pato, a duck — which makes the consequence obvious without any correction. Group by cluster rather than mixing five, and start with pl and bl, which are the most frequent. Eight minutes covers a subset properly.
What to listen for
Listen for the l being dropped rather than separated. Pato for plato is reduction; puh-lato is insertion, and the two need different cues — reduction responds to adding the missing sound slowly, insertion to speeding the two up. Watch glotón and flecha, which are the longest here and where the cluster competes with the rest of the word.
Carrying it home
Plato, flor and blanco are everyday words in a Spanish-speaking home. Asking which word the child meant, when plato comes out as pato, gives them the feedback without a correction attached.
Questions
- Is this board in Spanish?
- Yes, all fourteen 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 with no login.
- Is cluster reduction normal in Spanish?
- In young children, yes — it is a typical early pattern, as it is in English. It becomes a target when it persists past the age most children have outgrown it.