Thousands of words you already know

This is the point to return to whenever a class feels discouraged. Because English and Spanish share a Latin and Greek foundation, an educated Spanish speaker already recognises a very large slice of English vocabulary. Students do not need to learn these words — they need to unlock them, using tools already in this guide:

• Transformation rules (§1) convert Spanish endings into English ones.
• Prefixes carry across almost unchanged: pre-, re-, in-/im-, trans-, sub-, inter-, anti-.
• Suffixes convert predictably: -ción → -tion, -dad → -ty, -oso → -ous.
• Roots are shared: port (carry), dict (say), spect (look), scrib (write).

A strategy worth teaching: before reaching for a dictionary, break the word into prefix + root + suffix and ask what the Spanish cousin would be. Inevitable = in- (not) + evit (avoid, evitar) + -able — decoded on sight. For a Spanish speaker, English is not an entirely foreign language; it is one that shares a large vocabulary with their own.