Morphology and Vocabulary
October 27, 2009In the morphology article we learn that students with a broader vocabulary usually comprehend what they are reading better. They usually have an easier using clues to help them decide what unknown words mean. Some of the ways they decode words are: using root words, knowing how it relates to other words around it and by relating the word to something they know. Also, for ELL students seeing the similarity between certain words in English and then the parallel word in Spanish helps them to define the word. It is important that students have these decoding skills by upper elementary grades because reading is involved in everything that students do.
Morphology plays a large role in vocabulary. It is important for students to learn the roots of words. Also,in some words students will be able to more easily identify relationship between the roots. For instance, in the article it states that students will have an easier time going from dryer to dry that to see the relationship between strength and strong. Another aspects that students must learn about is prefixes and suffixes and how they change words. Students must know that adding a prefix to words can completely change the meaning. We see this when the prefix un is added to the word acceptable. Also, adding a suffix to a word often changes the tense. For example, by simply adding ed to the a word changes the tense from present to past.
There are many ways to help students gain a better grasp the meanings of words. As teachers we must use every resource available to help our students grow their vocabularies. One way we can do this is by reading on a consistent basis. We can choose words from passages and discuss their meanings with our students. We can teach them decoding skills such as using the other words in a sentence to try to figure out what the unknown word means or using their background knowledge. Another tool that I believe would be useful is to have different types of word walls in the classroom. We could have one for prefixes and suffixes and others for root words, etc. We could also create charts that shows students as many possible tenses of the word as possible.
