As we mentioned in the TESOL advanced course training, there are many types of word formation such as : compound words, conversion words, clipping words, blending words. During my bilingual teaching experience, I have found that English prefixes and suffixes are quite confusing to Chinese learners.

When we use English to communicate with foreigners, we have to think about the parts of speech, most word formation has basic regular rules, such as ‘reality’ which is a noun (end with ty), realistic is adjective (ends with tic), realist means person (end up with st), realization is a noun (end up with tion), realistically is adverb (end up with ly), realize is a verb (end up with ze) and this is why prefixes and suffixes learning are very important in L2 teaching.

As we know some prefixes and suffixes stand for specific meaning : de/dis/un means the opposite to the root words usual meaning. mon/uni/un means one; ambi/bi/bin/di means two; ian means…people/ someone work in some field; ing means in the process.

TESOL Suffixes and Prefixes :

Most prefixes and suffixes have regular rules such as :

Grand: grandfather, grandmother, grandson

Step: stepfather, stepmother, stepson

In law: father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law

Ese : Chinese, Japanese, Sinhalese

An : Singaporean, Korean, Zimbabwean

Some words add prefix or suffix will make conversion, such as:

Less: hopeless, artless, careless

Ful : joyful, helpful, wonderful

Im: impatient, immigrant, impact

Re: replete, react, rejoin

Some words may combine with a prefix and suffix together, such as:

Abnormal=ab+norm+al

Interaction=inter+act+ion

Some word consists with two prefixes and one-word root

Reconstruct=re+con+struct

Some words consist with one word root with two suffixes

Nationalism=nation+al+ism

Nationalist=nation+al+ist

These words are easy to find the rule and keep in mind, but in elementary school, when students in their reading class, they become quite confused about how to describe each animal because there is no specific rule they can use.

For example, baby animals in English have many words to describe them: such as cub, kitten, foal, chick, duckling, fawn, piglet as compared to Chinese where baby animals are usually called small ‘xiao小’. Learners tend to use the Chinese translation for these if they have not learnt or remembered the correct name and they will add ‘baby’ in front of animals. baby cat, baby deer etc as the table below demonstrates.

词缀	male公	female母	baby小宝宝
dog狗	dog公狗	bitch母狗	puppy小狗
pig猪	boar公猪	sow母猪	piglet小猪
lion狮	lion公狮	lioness母狮	cub小狮子
deer鹿	buck公鹿	doe母鹿	fawn小鹿
cattle牛	bull公牛	cow母牛	calf小牛
horse马	stallion公马	mare母马	foal小马
cat猫	cat公猫	tabby母猫	kitten小猫
chicken鸡	rooster公鸡	hen母鸡	chick小鸡
duck鸭	drake公鸭	duck母鸭	duckling小鸭
goose鹅	goose公鹅	gander母鹅	gosling小鹅

The same is true for male animals where we would have boar, bull, tom, stag or female animals: soar, cow, queen, doe, bitch for bears, camels, cats and deer respectively, but in Chinese it is simply ‘gong’ 公 for male or 母mu for female.

Teachers use two methods to teach vocabulary such as this above, explicit teaching with the use of word lists and implicit which is exposing words in context of real texts. Following Craik & Lockhart (1972) that the wider the range of metacognitive activities the better the learning of vocabulary will be.

So in addition to using animal flash cards that reflect the vocabulary list, and selected reading texts that use the new vocabulary in context which ensures that the learning is relevant to their external language activities and helps reinforce students’ memorization we may also act out the roles of gender characteristics and use ‘guess the name’ activities for the object being learned. Going further than these traditional methods of vocabulary learning we also examine the synonyms and rhyming words to increase the amount of ‘processing’ the students are required to do and providing a fully rounded metacognitive experience.

References

Craik & Lockhart (1972) Levels of processing: A framework for Memory Research. Journal of Verbal learning and verbal behavior. v11, p671

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