<p>So...I'm wrote an essay for AP Spanish and my teacher looked it over. He makes marks on it where our mistakes are. We figure out what the errors are and return the essay to be graded for points. I'm having trouble figuring out what I did wrong here. Any native speaker or high level speaker that can help me out?</p>
<p>I wanted to say: Children learn responsibility if they have pets.</p>
<p>I wrote: Los ni</p>
<p>I have no idea what more your teacher wants. Before I scrolled down and saw your answer I translated the sentence in my head and I came up with the same sentence you have.</p>
<p>Maybe he wants:
Los niños aprenden ser responsables si tienen una mascota. </p>
<p>Althought that would mean that your original sentence would have to be:
Children learn to be responsible if they have pets.</p>
<p>Maybe he just read it fast and made a mistake.</p>
<p>EDIT: I think "la" might work, actually, but it just doesn't sound right.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks. He has to read a ton of essays, so he may have read it too fast.</p>
<p>How about: Los niños aprenden a ser responsables si tienen animales domésticos? I'm not sure if I would translate pets as mascota.</p>
<p>Well, the essay prompt we used used the word mascota and he said to use it, so I don't think that's the problem. The only problem he has with the sentence is it's (it may be) missing a word in the spot mentioned above.</p>