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Word Roots and Vocabulary Instruction (Part 1)Timothy RasinskiMost of us can remember the traditional way of teaching vocabulary – the good old fashioned weekly word list that required students to look up the dictionary definitions for the 20 words on the list. My guess is that most of us do not have fond memories of this approach. In fact, this memorization approach to vocabulary instruction is one of the reasons why the vocabulary achievement of American students has been stagnant for the past 20 years (NAEP, 2013). Rote memorization of words and their definitions is not only boring, it is also ineffective. The critical question then is not that vocabulary should be taught, but rather how should vocabulary be taught in ways that are both effective and engaging for students. New light was shed on effective vocabulary and reading instruction in a recent article in edutopia by highly respected literacy scholar Nell Duke (November 6, 2017) --- “Three Literacy Practices that Work” (). At the top of her list of effective literacy practices was Morphology Instruction. Morphology refers to the meaning-carrying units in language, and includes root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Duke cites research by Goodwin and Ahn (2013) that argues that instruction in morphemes leads to improvements in word decoding, spelling, and vocabulary; and because word decoding and vocabulary contribute to reading comprehension, there is evidence that morphology instruction leads to improvement in reading comprehension and overall reading achievement (Goodwin & Ahn, 2010; Goodwin, Lipsky, & Ahn, 2012). Moreover, morphology instruction holds great potential for students who struggle in language and literacy learning (Nagy, Carlisle, & Goodwin, 2013). Why Morphology?Human beings have the remarkable ability to see patterns in their environments. Indeed, we take advantage of this in phonics instruction when we teach children word families or rimes. If we teach children the phonetic pattern –ent they now have the ability to decode simple words such as bent, cent, dent, Kent ( my university) lent, rent, sent, stent, tent, vent, and went, and to partially decode more complex words such as enter, centimeter, gentle, relent, and many more. This same generative principle applies to meaningful word patterns such roots, prefixes, and suffixes with one exception. Besides assisting with the pronunciation of words containing these patterns, they are also powerful aids in determining the meaning of words containing the patterns. For example, if you know that the word root grat/grac that means “thanks”, you should have no trouble in figuring out that someone who is grateful is filled with thanks, grace is a prayer of thanks often given before a meal, a gratuity is a way to offer thanks for good service, particularly in a restaurant, congratulate is a way to say thanks for a job well done, and to ingratiate means to make others feel thankful for something you've done. You should even be able to figure also that even the Spanish word gracias means thanks. In this season of Thanks we should help students recall that when they see grat or grac in a word, there is a good chance that it has something to do with thanks. I am definitely grateful for all the great teachers we have who help students and who help to make this world a better place. I think it is safe to say that if you are reading this blog, like me, you are likely a “lexophile” – someone who loves words. I hope I have whetted your appetite for learning more about morphology (word root) instruction. In my next blog I will present ways of making morphology instruction actually work in elementary, middle, and high schools. ................
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