English Words from Latin & Greek Increase spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension
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Transcript of English Words from Latin & Greek Increase spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension
Susan Ebbers 2005 1
English Words
from Latin & Greek
Increase spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension
Susan Ebbers 2005 2
How many words are there in the English Language?
• The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
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Yea, yea, so get to the point…
• This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach….
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Are you ready for this?
• three quarters of a million
• 750,000
• Thatsalotawords!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Real world demands….• Only 30% of 4th graders are proficient readers
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP 2007)
• 42 million adults in the US are "functionally illiterate," meaning that can't read the front page of the newspaper. (NAEP 2007)
• Lack of vocabulary can be a crucial factor underlying the school failure of disadvantage students (Becker, 1977; Bielmiller, 1999).
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The average sixth grade student knows approximately 25,000 words.
The average high school graduate knows approximately 50,000 words.
This means that average students learn roughly 2000-3,000 words a year (Graves, 2007).
This translates to 8 words a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year - including weekends or summers.
Shrinking personal vocabularies
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Some specifics on the importance of vocabulary…
• Growing up in poverty can seriously restrict the vocabulary children learn before beginning school and make attaining an adequate vocabulary a very challenging task (Coyne, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 2004; Hart & Risley, 1995).
• Less advantaged students are likely to have substantially smaller vocabularies than their more advantaged classmates (Templin, 1957; White, Graves, & Slater, 1990).
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It is estimated that by age 3, some less advantaged students have heard 30 million fewer words than their more advantaged peers.
It is also estimated these students’ vocabularies may be half the size of those of their more advantaged counterparts (Hart and Risely 2003 & Graves, 2007 ).
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Bet cha’ didn’t know…
• In California they determine how many jail cells they will build to house future inmates - by calculating how many children are not reading on grade level by third grade.
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Here is a short cut!
• Half of all “high-frequency words” every day words,
• and two-thirds of all academic and technical words are derived from Latin or Greek.
• So learn the meanings of roots, prefixes, and suffixes and these basic elements make it easier to learn new words.
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Basic Termsroot form: a word with no prefix or suffix added; may also be referred to as a base word inspector, thermal
affix: meaningful part of a word attached before or after a root or base word to modify its meaning
prefix: an affix which is placed before the stem of a word re-, un-, dis-
suffix: an affix which is placed after the stem of a word -able, -ive, -ly
derivation-a word formed from an existing word, root, or affix: electric, electricity
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20 Most Frequent Prefixes in School Texts
1. unable 2. reviewinedible (impotent, illegal,
irresponsible)
distrustenlighten
(empower)nonsense
inside, implant
overcome
misguided submarine prefix interrupt forewarn
derail transfer supersonic semicircle antitrust
midterm underfedAnalysis: White, Sowell,
and Yanagihara 1989
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Prefixes: Meaning and Connotation
Somewhat Positive
pro- co- bene-
super- com- be-
en-, em-
ad-
Often Negative
dis-, de-
non- sub-
in- un- mis-
mal-anti,
contraa-
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Derivational Suffixes
Derivational suffixes change the part of speech
• words ending with –tion are often nouns• words ending with –ive are often adjectives• words ending with –ish are often adjectives• words ending with –ity are often nouns
What about -ment, -ous, -ness?
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Greek Combining Forms
hydro graph geo
pyro polis neuro
ortho scope photo
therm crat psych
chron phobe pseud
onym crypt helio
logy sphere the, theo
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Counting in Greek and Latin
mono uni di
bi du, duo tri
tetra quadri penta
hexa sept oct
nove deca deci
cent milli poly
multi semi hemi
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Developing content-specific, academic vocabulary depends on a basic understanding of Greek and Latin
Sixty percent of the words in English texts are of Latin and Greek origin Bear et al., 1996; Henry, 1997
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Content-Specific Greek Terms
Anatomy and Medical Terms
esophagus, thyroid, diagnosis, psoriasis, dyslexia
Studies and Sciences
biology, seismology, morphology, geochronometry
Animals and Plantsarachnid, amphibian, chlorophyll, dinosaur, nectar
Theatre and the Artscharisma, drama, chorus, muse, symphony, acoustics
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Look Inside—Look Outside pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
• Look inside the word for known word parts: prefixes, roots or combining forms, suffixes.
• Use the analogy strategy—“I don’t know this word, but I know pneumonia and I know volcano, so by analogy, this word might have something to do with lungs and heat.”
• Look outside the word at context clues, visuals
The coal miners, coughing and wheezing, suffered from pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
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So what exactly are we going to do here at Skirball Middle School?
• Learn to use context clues effectively• Study and practice most common root
words• Study and practice most frequently used
prefixes and suffixes • Learn to use THEIVES as a reading
strategy to use all the clues in the text to uncover word meaning.
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So…
• Ready?
• Set?
• Here we go!