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chaz47
Joined: 11 Sep 2003
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 Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:16 pm Post subject: ideas for vocabulary exercises? Hanja for Greek/Latin roots |
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I was thinking about using Hanja to teach Greek and Latin roots to my middle schoolers.
You know like:
hak = study/learn
logos = study/learn
saeng mul hak = biology
biology = "life" "study"
Stuff like that... but I need suggestions on the format and words to use. The names for the sciences are pretty easy. At first glance the phobias might be pretty easy too.
I am hoping this will instill in them a love for acquiring new vocabulary and aid in their pronunciation of multisyllabic words.
It should be fun for me too, as I will be able to study while preparing the materials.
Any suggestion or links are welcome. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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For higher-level students Latin roots for pronouns (pro=to / for [dae] noun [myeong-sa]) might be of interest, as they can see how language has evolved.
Qui - who
Cuius - whose
Quam - whom
etc.
I also teach the logos / -ology and graphos / -graphy thing.
I've found that some of the brighter students are also interested in where words come from. Using a map of Europe you can show them that grammar and most official terms have come from French via Latin following the Norman Conquest: e.g. parliament from parler, bureaucracy from bureau, etc. Most scientific terms have come from Greece: e.g. anthropos / logos = anthropology. Most mundane terms have come from German: e.g. boot / s h i t / etc., but some have come from Norse, one of the reasons why English has so many synonyms like skill and craft. |
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Boodleheimer
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Location: working undercover for the Man
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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i had mine memorize hic, hac, hoc and qui, quae, quod.
nah, i'm just messing with you.
i'd like to do something with roots, too, but i'm worried it's above the level of my students. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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As much as I love etymology I only teach a little bit here and there because of the students' level, but I do find that teaching prefixes really helps. Whenever we come across a sub- or un- or re- I always stop to ask what it means.
The Korean-produced Voca series does a very good job of teaching through word bases, too. |
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chaz47
Joined: 11 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:46 am Post subject: |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
The Korean-produced Voca series does a very good job of teaching through word bases, too. |
Any more information on this series? |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:49 am Post subject: |
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| There are more useful things to spend classtime on. Tasks covering vocabulary from the 1,000, 2,000 and Academic Word Lists will serve your students better than etymology. IMHO. |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| http://ec.hku.hk/mt/ |
This is good but its largely medical terms |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 11:00 am Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| There are more useful things to spend classtime on. |
I love the AWL, but I would strongly oppose the idea that studying morphemes is a waste of time. Here's what I figure:
In my intermediate level class, I rarely have a student who knows what a unicyclist is. Yet upon survey, most say they own a bicycle. Their vocabulary is sufficient enough that they are sitting in school uniforms, somewhere in the universe, studying a vocabulary unit. But they often fail to clue in to the pattern uniting these words, instead viewing each word as isolated islands of meaning.
This won't do at all, especially since affixes in their various combinations make up 50 per cent of the English language. While almost every teacher assigns vocabulary work, at a certain point learning morphemes is simply a more effective method of vocabulary acquisition, as understanding one affix can gain a student access to dozens of words. In fact, I recall reading one study that stated 20 certain prefixes and 14 certain roots comprised 14,000 common English words and an estimated 100,000 in total.
So why the hesitance in teaching morphemes? Perhaps teachers simply believe that the knowledge of morphemes is only useful for dissecting boggling scientific nomenclature.
This, of course, couldn�t be further from the truth. Even everyday words like triangle, bicycle, and intermediate are rich in affixes that clearly broadcast the sum of their parts. As a bonus, these everyday words have some semantic affialitition, and this creates a bridge to higher-level words. But what makes it even more simple is that the top 20 prefixes comprise 97 per cent of the usage of all combined. So the teachers need not drag the more obscure ones lurking in dark recesses of the dictionary.
I go a little further than the top 20 prefixes, but most of my students enjoy the challenge of decoding unknown words, and I set it up as a kind of puzzle.
I do a weekly activity called "Monday Morphemes" in which I provide a list of ten previously unmet words -- unicyclist, postscript, extraterrestrial etc. -- for the students to analyse for meaning. As they progress in their abilities, I increase the difficulty of the task by shifting the learning focus from assessing meaning of semantic units to definining complete words, and then having students situate that word in the context of a sentence.
To aid in their development of this decoding skill, I have also made lists of the most common affixes, about 100 in total. First I teach suffixes, which also helps students' grammar. At the same time I do word form charts (beauty-beautify-beautiful-beautifully) -- similar in its chunking strategy, and it teaches students that instead of simply memorizing random weird words they need to learn how to use what they already know in different ways. Next I teach prefixes, and last roots, as they are the most numerous and difficult to grasp.
I have students memorize these lists, and I do a host of activities with them (lots of things with webs and lists, even some dictation of difficult words, as morpheme knowledge also helps improve spelling -- pseudo is never sudo). At the end we have a test. This I compare with the pretest I have them do as well, and usually my students stagger at the difference this awareness makes in their vocabulary.
In short, affixes are awesome & I heartily recommend studying them.
ROBT. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| robot wrote: |
I love the AWL, but I would strongly oppose the idea that studying morphemes is a waste of time.
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Yeah, you're right, and those are some really good ideas. It was more the connection with hanja that weirded me out a bit - I don't think that sounds like the best idea. I also wouldn't start from the point of the teaching the original Greek/Latin word, but focus on drawing attention to the component morphemes as the words were used.
Actually, I think I didn't read the OP carefully enough, saw 'teaching latin/greek & hanja', thought 'what the christ?' and posted without thinking. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| chaz47 wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
The Korean-produced Voca series does a very good job of teaching through word bases, too. |
Any more information on this series? |
It's called 능률 Voca by 어원편 and lists contributers as 'Mr Heyman, Mr Stevens, Ms Lewis, Ms Lisehora and Mr Alan Heyman' - I don't know why Mr Heyman gets listed a second time with with Christian name, lol. It's publised by Neung-Yule Education, Inc. and has heaps of stuff about etymology that even I don't know. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| There are more useful things to spend classtime on. Tasks covering vocabulary from the 1,000, 2,000 and Academic Word Lists will serve your students better than etymology. IMHO. |
There are certain roots and prefixes that come up so often it's a really good idea to point them out. If I wrote the word 'submarine' on the board probably 25% of my students would know what it meant. If I then divided it into sub / marine and asked 'what does sub meant? What does marine mean?' a much higher number of them would because most rememberwhat sub means from me repeated teaching them.
Last week in my grade 1 dummies ... I mean vocational class I was doing a reveiw trivia quiz and had a section on opposites. One of the words from the textbook was 'clear' which I wrote on the board. 'What's its opposite ... bandae?' I asked.
'Dirty!' the first girl blurted out.
'No, cleaR ... clea-RRRR'
After a brief hesitation another girl offered 'uh, unclear?' and inwardly I went 'YES! I know she only figured that out that because of me'. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| There are certain roots and prefixes that come up so often it's a really good idea to point them out. If I wrote the word 'submarine' on the board probably 25% of my students would know what it meant. If I then divided it into sub / marine and asked 'what does sub meant? What does marine mean?' a much higher number of them would because most rememberwhat sub means from me repeated teaching them. |
Yeah, I'm completely happy with that - like I said though, my first impression was of some kind of lesson that involved showing the hanja for 'arae/ha' and 'bada/hae' then teaching 'sub' and 'mare' before getting to 'submarine', rather than something perfectly sensible and normal. I read the OP too quickly and posted without thinking, and now feel a little foolish. |
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Lizara
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm studying hanja now because it's great for learning Korean vocabulary, but I don't think it's a good idea to use it to help with English vocabulary because the two systems are so very different and I find a lot of the mistakes that my students repeat over and over again come from them trying to compare English and Korean. You could talk a little about Korean vocabulary and hanja and how it all fits together as a precursor to your study of Latin/Greek roots of English words, and that might be helpful for them to understand why they need to learn this stuff, but aside from that I'd keep the hanja out of it and teach the roots purely in English. However, I agree that it's totally useful to teach the word parts once they've reached the level where they're learning those kinds of words. |
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