Knowledge of Word Formation
Students can increase their word power by understanding the various ways in which words are built:
Affixation
Affixation is the process of adding prefixes (e.g. un-, dis-) and suffixes (e.g. -ly, -able) to the base word (e.g. like). This often results in the meaning and/or part of speech being modified.
Developing knowledge of common prefixes and suffixes will help students handle and learn new vocabulary items even if the context is not familiar.
Compounding
Compounding is the formation of a word from two or more separate words. The awareness of compounding may enable students to guess the meaning of new words such as “childcare”,
“bookworm” and “fire engine”.
Collocation
Collocations of an individual word refer to the combinations that that word enters into with other words. Thus, for example, the word “ read” is frequently in collocation with the word “book”.
Knowing a word’s likely collocations is an important aspect of vocabulary development. Examples of collocation range from two-word combinations such as “happy about” and “strongly suggest”
to more extended combinations such as “making steady progress” and “recovering from a major operation”. Words can collocate with others with different degrees of frequency and acceptability – some words are more likely to occur together than others, and many words occur in several different collocations. Knowledge of the collocation range of a word facilitates the students’
ability to encode and decode language quickly and accurately. Teachers can either present the collocation information directly, by telling them common collocates when students learn a word, or use a more discovery-based approach by asking students to search for collocations of particular words in a text. Either way, students will always benefit from knowing the collocation range of a word and its high-frequency collocates.
Knowledge of Lexical Relations
By developing students’ knowledge about the various ways in which words are related, teachers can help students understand the richness of the connections that bind the English lexicon together.
Word families
It is useful for students to learn a word and the parts of speech of other words from the same family at the same time (e.g. taste, tasteful, distaste, tasteless, tasty). It is also helpful for them to know that certain suffixes are linked with certain parts of speech. Many nouns, for example, end in -ment, -tion, or -ship. When students are able to generalise from this knowledge, they may be able to work out other members of the word family even though initially only one word is learnt.
Synonymy, antonymy and homonymy
Meaningful practice intended to develop knowledge of synonymy (i.e. relations of sameness), antonymy (i.e. relations of oppositeness) and homonymy (i.e. words with the same spelling but with different meanings) will help students extend their vocabulary and sensitivity in the choice of words. The study of homonyms will, for example, draw students’ attention to the wealth of meanings that English words possess. One can, for example, “pick” a flower, a dress, a hole or an argument with someone. Homonyms also take students into the metaphorical meanings of words.
“Hands”, for instance, are more than a body part. We can also refer to the hands of a clock, a hand in a game of poker and to “giving someone a helping hand”.
Guessing and Inferencing
One of the most common vocabulary building strategies that students should employ is making guesses and inferences about new words. They are the processes a good learner will use when faced with difficulty in reading, or in a situation where a dictionary or helpful speaker of the language is not available. Students should be trained to make use of linguistic cues (e.g. the grammatical structure of a sentence and connectives) to guess the meaning of a new word. They should also be encouraged to make guesses through searching for contextual clues within a text and make intelligent guesses from a meaningful context. Their knowledge of word formation (i.e.
prefixes, suffixes, compound words and collocation) and knowledge of lexical relations (i.e.
collocation and sense relations, such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy) can be tapped and developed, in order to help them decipher new words. Through some well-designed exercises, students soon learn that they do not need to resort to the dictionary for every unknown word they encounter.
Using a Dictionary and Thesaurus
Using reference materials such as a dictionary and thesaurus is an essential skill that all students should develop, in order to become independent in their learning. With effective and judicious use of these reference materials, students can not only solve their problems in comprehension and confirm their guesses about a word, but also increase their vocabulary.
Students at the senior secondary level should learn to use the dictionary to find out the less frequent, unusual or rare meaning and special usage of words in a text. They should also develop more extended dictionary strategies to learn to use the words appropriately (e.g. reading the examples provided in the dictionary, making use of the information in the dictionary to help them learn vocabulary and make sentences on their own).
The purpose of a thesaurus with its synonyms and near synonyms is to enable students to make a more precise choice of vocabulary. It can help students find the best term or expression to portray their thoughts and sentiments.
Recording Words
Language learning activities and extensive reading, which can increase students’ knowledge of new words and familiar words, may be ineffective if students make no effort to retain the words.
Students should be encouraged to record words and acquire the habit and strategies for reviewing new words and familiar words in order to retain them. Useful techniques include keeping vocabulary notebooks with words and related information organised thematically or alphabetically, and storing vocabulary information by using diagrams (e.g. spider maps) to help highlight the relationships between items. Students will find it useful if they also enter information on the usage of the words, collocations of them or note down examples showing the usage of the words. Records of words according to both meanings and usage are encouraged.
Retaining Words
It is important to help students develop a range of effective means for retaining the words they have come across, so that their repertoire of vocabulary can be enlarged. This can be done by asking students to make word lists, go through their word lists regularly, and develop strategies to aid memory through creating their own associations and mental images of the new words. They can, for example, associate words that are related in their spelling, or shape, or sound, or meaning, or by virtue of the contexts in which they are used.
Helping students acquire and consolidate various vocabulary building skills is a particularly productive area for the encouragement of learner autonomy. Students can reflect on ways of
learning vocabulary and develop individual approaches to solving problems. They can ask themselves what is important for them to know about individual words, assess their own vocabulary needs and shortcomings regularly, and keep a record of their performance in actual situations. Students can be encouraged to develop their own personal learning styles for vocabulary, in such areas as memorising and retaining new words.
Appendix 3
Examples of Text Types for Key Stages 1 – 4 (Primary 1 – Secondary 6)
A text is produced for a given purpose. Hence, the text types listed below can be of different natures such as narrative, informational, procedural, expository, persuasive, depending on the purposes they serve. Teachers might like to draw students’ attention to both the conventions and features of a particular text type and the purpose the text serves in the learning and teaching process.
Text Types for Key Stage 1 (Primary 1 – 3)
Additional Text Types for Key Stage 2 (Primary 4 – 6)
Additional Text Types for Key Stage 3 (Secondary 1 – 3)
Additional Text Types for Key Stage 4 (Secondary 4 – 6)
Advertisements
Captions
Cards
Cartoons and comics
Charts
Conversations
Coupons
Diaries
Directions
Fables and fairy tales
Forms
Illustrations
Instructions
Labels
Leaflets
Lists
Menus
Notes and messages
Notices
Personal descriptions
Personal letters
Personal recounts
Picture dictionaries
Poems
Postcards
Posters
Product information
Rhymes
Riddles
Rules
Signs
Songs
Stories
Tables
Timetables
Accounts
Announcements
Autobiographies
Biographies
Blogs
Brochures
Catalogues
Children’s encyclopaedias
Dictionaries
Directories
Discussions
Emails
Explanations of how and why
Formal letters
Informational reports
Jokes
Journals
Maps and legends
Myths
News reports
Pamphlets
Plays
Procedures
Questionnaires
Recipes
Telephone conversations
Tongue twisters
Weather reports
Webpages
Book reviews/reports
Encyclopaedias
Film reviews
Interviews
Itineraries
Letters to the editor
Manuals
Memoranda
Newspaper/
Magazine articles
Presentations
Short films
Short novels
Social media texts
Talks
Trailers
Abstracts/synopses
Agendas
Debates
Documentaries
Editorials
Essays
Feature articles
Films
Minutes
Novels
Proposals
Speeches
Resumes
Thesauri
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Appendix 4