Fruits and Vegetables in English: Names and Pronunciation

Practice on screen

Look at the picture or number and choose the right English word. Ten questions each round.

How to teach it

1. 1. Taste and name

   Bring a few safe, familiar fruits and vegetables to the table. Let the child look, smell, touch and taste, then say the name and one word: "Apple. Sweet." Real food gives the word a strong memory. Check for allergies first.

2. 2. Shopping game

   Set up a pretend shop with picture cards or toy food. One child is the shopper and asks: "Can I have two apples, please?" The other puts them in a basket. Swap roles. This practices the words, numbers and plurals in a useful sentence.

3. 3. Fruit or vegetable?

   Make two big circles on paper, one for fruit and one for vegetables. The child places each picture card in a circle and says the name. Discuss borderline cases only if the child is ready; for now, sort by what people usually call them.

4. 4. Color the produce

   Draw outlines of a banana, a tomato, a carrot and a pear, and ask the child to color each correctly. Say a color for each: "The carrot is orange." This links the topic to the colors the child already knows.

5. 5. What is in the bag?

   Put a fruit or vegetable in a cloth bag. The child reaches in and feels it, then guesses in English: "It is a pear." Give hints with words the child knows: "It is round. It is green."

6. 6. Make a fruit salad

   Cook or prepare a simple fruit salad together and give simple instructions: "Wash the grapes. Cut the banana." The child hears the fruit names in real sentences and sees what they mean.

Common mistakes

• Writing tomatos and potatos

  Tomato and potato add -es in the plural: tomatoes, potatoes. Mango can be mangoes or mangos. Say the plural aloud when you write it and show the extra e.

• Changing -y to -ies

  When a word ends in a consonant plus y, the y changes to ies: strawberry becomes strawberries, cherry becomes cherries. Learners often write "strawberrys". Compare with banana, which only adds -s.

• Using a with broccoli, garlic and lettuce

  These are not counted, so do not say "a broccoli". Say "some broccoli", "some lettuce" or "a head of lettuce". Say "a clove of garlic" for one piece.

• Using a instead of an

  Use an before a vowel sound: an apple, an orange, an onion, an eggplant. Use a before the rest: a banana, a pear, a carrot.

• Saying "a grapes" or "a peas"

  Grapes and peas are plural words, so they do not take a. Say "grapes", "some grapes", "a bunch of grapes" and "some peas". One piece is a grape or a pea.