how to teach prefixes/suffixes or root words

Glenski · Post by **Glenski** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 12:00 am

I have high school kids in Japan at an intermediate level. Part of my assignment this year is to improve their vocabulary, so helping them to learn and understand prefixes, suffixes, and root words is a basic necessity.

How do you do this? I'm really concerned about making lesson plans that are not overwhelming in the number of prefixes, suffixes, and root words, as well as making lessons that are enjoyable in only a 45-minute period. I have about 20 students per class.

In addition to activities, what are some good reference books for these things? (Yes, I'm scouring the Internet, but I'd like some firsthand reports instead of wasting money on books that turn out to be useless, which is what I already have done.)

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 2:14 am

Yeah, I haven't been much impressed by most of the books I've seen on affixation.

It might be an idea to start with something academicy:
http://www.uni-siegen.de/~engspra/plag-in-press.pdf

Then, rather than only give a couple of examples for each prefix or suffix, why not do some 'prefix' and 'affix' searches in the 'definition' field, then lots of wildcard searches (e.g. im*; *ness), all using a dictionary CD-ROM, and make a list of actual, complete WORDS that are frequent and quite useful? (You could get an idea of what affixes are the most productive this way e.g. ' My im- list has 26 words, whilst my -ness list has 1,234, seems we should look at -ness words first! But there are some important words still in the im- list that it will be impossible to do without!' (I made those numbers up, by the way)).

One big advantage of searching a dictionary in this way is that you have at the same time immediate access to usually dependable and hopefully quite clear and relevant examples and contexts, from which you can handpick the juiciest, most interesting ones so as not to overwhelm the students or turn them off of studying too much.

Of course, there may be a resource already published or a database available with these kind of statistics ready to hand, but I don't think you can beat getting your own feet wet a bit first.

Senorita Daniels · Post by **Senorita Daniels** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:40 pm

Maybe after you have a list of prefixes, suffixes, and root words, you could have a fun worksheet were they need to write words with a given definition or the definition to made up words.

Glenski · Post by **Glenski** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:49 am

Senorita,
The difficult thing is teaching them roots. I can easily enough teach them how to add prefixes and suffixes to existing words, but it is extremely hard to get across the concept of a root form, especially if it can't stand alone as a whole word.

We do a typical lesson like this...
I present 3 suffixes and 3 prefixes, and solicit definitions from the class. The ones they don't know, I give them.

They try to find an example of each one in a magazine (2 minutes), and we go over some of them to see if they got real ones or not. Spelling alone sometimes doesn't make a word from a prefix or suffix.

I give them some words and ask them to add a prefix or suffix to give it a new meaning.

I give them some fill in the blank sentences so they can use those words (and others) and get some practice out of it.

We play a board game as review for these, and they get a take-home crossword puzzle with all of the words.

So far, the first year kids are enjoying it, but the second-year kids aren't.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:13 pm

Came across this today:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/info05.html

Scroll down to Morpheme sets and flashcards, then click on the Morpheme Flashcards link.

There's also this (can't remember exactly how the one led to the other):
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/