LEANING TOWARDS WORDS

 

Words are intertwined around meaning and function. In this Blog the brief discussion is about how some words function and the importance of developing this knowledge so children’s choice of words when writing is greatly expanded.

An example for young children is:

First writings involve a clause that is a noun and a verb, a simple phrase. They may write nouns such as names, Sam, or a pronoun, I. They continue and include a verb, Sam went, I ran. Phrases clump words together to form a complete idea, The (definite article) man drove a blue (noun, verb and adjective, making a noun phrase) car up the street (prepositional phrase).

When learning about compound sentences, they write conjunctions, ‘and’, ‘because’ which extends their ideas.

To extend student’s repertoire, morphological structures are not only an important study of word forms but they increase a student’s vocabulary. A morpheme is the small meaningful unit of language. Words can be single morphemes for example, ‘fix’ a base or root word. There are multiple morphemes that form new words, for example a prefix, refix. The fix and refix have different meanings.

Farther on, a child learns about suffixes at the end of words; they not only form a new word but they alter the grammatical function. A verb move can be changed into a noun (movement) by adding the suffix ‘ment’.

There are noun suffixes ful (power), verb suffixes en (fasten), adjective suffixes ous, dangerous, adverb suffixes ly lovely.

ING is a suffix to add to make new words. Base words, for example ask, fly, entertain are transformed when adding ing, asking, flying, entertaining (all present tense verbs). But there are some tricky verbs where the ‘e’ in argue is removed when adding ing arguing; hit has a t added when adding ing hitting.

The beauty of the ing sound is that it remains a constant sound.

ED suffix mainly involves tenses. The present tense verb - want changes into past tense when ed is added want ed; will help (future tense) is changed into past tense when the ed is added, help ed.

The verb ‘ed’ does not remain a constant sound ‘d’, sometimes it sounds as a ‘t’.

ED at the end of words can function as an adjective, talent ed boy, relax ed girl.

ER can be a comparison adjective. The base word ‘fast’ can have additions ‘faster’, ‘fastest’; the same with the base word big, ‘bigger’, ‘biggest’.

ER the verb write can be made into a noun writer.

Synonyms and antonyms extend a child’s vocabulary. For example, the word align when seen as the opposite, an antonym, could be misalign.

Inquiry based projects increase students’ vocabulary expertise (and spelling skill). Consider studying Ancient Egypt and the pyramids, and introduce new words before the children read and write. Introduce their functions and ask them to explain why each one has the function it has – delta (a noun), fertile (an adjective), weaving (a verb) honouring (an adjective if used as honouring Fred), burial (a noun) the name, Khufu (a noun). With accompanying pictures, many of the words, being nouns, are visualized in order to process the information (kinaesthetic learning).

There are function words associated with punctuation, for example, the question mark. Ask children when would they write or think about these words ‘what’ (a pronoun, does this sound strange?), ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘how’ (adverbs, do these words describe an adverb? Reading and writing the full sentence structure necessitates the use of the ? (question mark). Children knowing the function of these words and their meanings allows prediction and correct insertion when writing.

These are only a few examples of how words function.

There are many ways to go when examining words and their grammatical significance.