Working Idea
Making new words
Tired of breaking up words? How about putting words together?
In your reading, you have probably come across words that are made up of two smaller words, like these:
homesick = home + sick
housework = house + work
something = some + thing
Why not try making up you own lists of words made up of smaller words? For example, how many words can you put together with “sick”? You might want to list words that you’ve heard, like these:
love + sick = lovesick
sea + sick = seasick
Or you might want to invent new words, like these:
welfare + sick = welfaresick
work + sick = worksick
When student find pronounceable sequences of letters within words, or, in compound words, actual words within words, they are beginning to open up the internal structure of words. Some students find it useful to open up the internal structure of words further, and work with prefixes, suffixes, and syllables. This work may not be for everybody, but it can be helpful.
Prefixes and suffixes are recurring sight information in words. This sight information is matched with recurring sound information. A seeing learner may be familiar with a particular prefix or suffix from sight. A hearing learner may recognize the familiar sound of -ING or -TION.
“Close your eyes,”
I tell them. “Listen to this I-N-G: singing,
seeing, walking.”
- Nancy, staff person, St. Christopher House Adult Literacy Program
So a student can add to the pronounceable parts of words that she knows by paying attention to common prefixes and suffixes. Learning meanings for these prefixes and suffixes is not necessarily useful at first; it is often better to point out the sight/sound/articulatory/handwriting patterns before analyzing them for meaning. Dharini, a staff person at ALFA, points to the complexity of knowing when a particular sequence of letters is a prefix/suffix, or when it is simply a sequence of letters. For example in UNWISE and UNDONE, UN- is a prefix, but in UNDER, it is not.
Dharini says that, for most students, it is the pronounceability of a recurring word part, rather than its meaning, that is important at first. The analysis of what suffixes and prefixes ad to meaning can come later.
Some students find it useful to work with syllables. For these students, who are presumably good at working with sound information, it helps to learn a word FREEDOM syllable-by-syllable, as FREE-DOM. Even though the -DOM has no meaning, it can be remembered by people who work well with sound information. Most of the tutors and facilitators that I spoke with do not work with syllables. However, in the programs that work with ESL literacy students, staff people told me that work with syllables was important, partly because it helps the student to hear the English words.