About this activity
Fourteen Spanish words with an /r/ cluster: brazo and brincar for br; cruz and crema for cr; dragón and dromedario for dr; fresa and frío for fr; grande and gracias for gr; primo and precio for pr; tren and trabajo for tr. Seven clusters is a wide sample, and the tap /r/ inside a cluster is a different sound from the trill.
How to use it in a session
Say the two consonants separately and then run them together. The /r/ in these clusters is the single tap rather than the trill, which is worth saying to a student who is also working on perro — they are different sounds with the same letter. Group by cluster and do gr and tr first, which appear in grande, gracias and tren, three of the most frequent words in the language. Ten minutes covers a subset.
What to listen for
Listen for the r being dropped. Gande for grande and ten for tren are the characteristic reductions, and both are real patterns rather than carelessness. Watch dromedario, the longest word here, where the cluster is at the start of a five-syllable word and the length competes with the target.
Carrying it home
Grande, gracias and tren come up constantly in Spanish. Asking a child to say one of them carefully, once, is better home practice than a list, because these words will be produced dozens of times anyway.
Questions
- Is this activity in Spanish?
- Yes, all fourteen words are Spanish. The 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 the r in these clusters the same as in 'perro'?
- No. In a cluster it is the single tap, not the trill. They are different sounds written with the same letter, and separating them is worth doing explicitly.