Got to Teach!: Teaching Greek and Latin Roots Some estimate that up to 75% of the English language is derived from Greek and Latin roots. They truly are the "building blocks" of English and present teachers with an extremely powerful framework to nurture students' vocabulary development. Why should you be teaching Greek and Latin roots to your students? 1. Consistency: Not only do these roots follow fairly consistent orthographic patterns, they also have distinct semantic components; these features, when explicitly taught, allow students to link pronunciation, spelling, and meaning when encountering new and/or challenging words. Just as primary teachers utilize the consistency of word families to teach their emergent readers, upper grade and secondary teachers can also rely on the consistency of roots when teaching their students. 2. 3. 4. Activities for Teaching Roots Most of the pintables referenced below can be downloaded for free {HERE}. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
The World's Most Spoken Languages And Where They Are Spoken This beautifully illustrated infographic (above), designed by South China Morning Post’s graphics director Alberto Lucas Lopéz, shows the most spoken known languages in the world and where they’re spoken by the 6.3 billion people included in the study. Based on records collated from the database Ethnologue, the infographic illustrates the wide-ranging facts and figures of the world’s living languages catalogued since 1951. “There are at least 7,102 known languages alive in the world today. Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people,” says Lopez on his infographic. “We represent each language within black borders and then provide the numbers of native speakers (in millions) by country. You can see the full pie chart in all its technicolor glory here. [H/T: ZME Science] Read this next: Blood Donors In Sweden Get A Text Whenever They Save A Life
Root Words, Roots and Affixes Many English words are formed by taking basic words and adding combinations of prefixes and suffixes to them. A basic word to which affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are added is called a root word because it forms the basis of a new word. The root word is also a word in its own right. For example, the word lovely consists of the word love and the suffix -ly. In contrast, a root is the basis of a new word, but it does not typically form a stand-alone word on its own. For example, the word reject is made up of the prefix re- and the Latin root ject, which is not a stand-alone word. Common Latin and Greek roots Download a copy of the Common Latin Roots chart below. Download a copy of the Common Greek Roots chart below. Affixes One method of understanding the meanings of new words is to analyze the different parts of the word and the meanings of those parts. Download a copy of the Common Prefixes chart below. Download a copy of the Common Suffixes chart below.
Recently added - word meanings Knowing Your Greek Root Words Can Help You Learn New Languages by Erinn Stam If you enjoy learning new languages, or just want to increase your knowledge of English, you'll want to learn Greek root words. Understanding the definitions of Greek root words and how they are used in the English language will help you tremendously. How Knowing Greek Root Words Will Help You Grasp English Better Even if English is your native language, you'll find that learning Greek root words will increase your vocabulary. Greek root words make up much of our medical and scientific language, so you'll find these root words particularly helpful if you're going into one of those two fields. How Knowing Greek Roots Words Will Help You Learn a New Language When you study the root words, you are building for yourself a set of tools that can be used to take apart and then rebuild new words you encounter. Important Greek Root Words to Memorize You'll find there are several Greek root words that you will recognize once you learn them. Author Links Other articles
5 Great Infographics for Language Teachers and Learners Infographics are great learning materials. The colourful graphics, clear text and their size make them ideal for classroom integration. I have been posting some of the ones I deem educationl to help teachers leverage this resource to create engaging, relevant and personalized learning experiences in their classes. In this regard, I am introducing you today to a series made up of four parts all containing the best infograpgics about English language teaching and learning. Due to their size we could not embed all the infographics in one post instead we distributed them on four posts with each one of them containing links to other posts to make it easy for you to navigate the four posts without having to move away. Teachers can print them out and pin them on the class wall for students to access throughout the whole year. Part One ( scroll down to read the content of this part) Definite and indefinite articlesAll about AdjectivesPunctuation Passive VoiceWhen to use e.g and i.e Part One
111 Greek and Latin Roots for Gifted Learners 111 Greek and Latin Word Parts To differentiate spelling and vocabulary for my gifted students, I incorporate words with Greek and Latin origins. This list is a compilation of 111 Greek and Latin roots with meanings and an example English word. Groups of Five Related Words In addition to the list of 111 word parts, I made 35 groups of 5 related words. Five Task Cards I also developed several activities for working with these words parts. Think Like An InventorGreekymons! Immediate Download Comes as a zip file with both PDF (for printing) and Word versions (in case you want to make changes).
Is Beirut the codeswitching capital of the world? At this high-end organic farmer’s market in downtown Beirut, buyers and sellers speak a mishmash of languages, usually Arabic and English or French. Just trying to pay for juice I have to switch back and forth from English to Arabic. The stand clerk starts in Arabic, “Here you go,” before switching in English, “these two [juices]?” Pia Bou Khater is at the market with me. At the juice stand, she switches too. “Oh, I think I have change,” she says in English, before she continues in Arabic, “3000.” Codeswitching this way is one of the characteristics that defines life in Beirut for visitors and for many Lebanese. “When I'm interacting with people, like buying things or trying to bargain, I rarely switch,” Pia explains. Multilingualism the way Pia knows it isn’t uncommon in Beirut. But that’s not the only reason she used “merci.” But another linguist, Lina Choueri, says the regular mixing of the three languages in everyday life actually didn’t happen until much later.
Word Root Of The Day Archive | Membean « Previous12345Next » #133 Oct 01, 16 rog ask, request The Latin root word rog means “ask.” This Latin root is the word origin of a fair number of English vocabulary words, including interrogate, arrogant, and prerogative. Read more #132 Sep 15, 16 ob- against Prefixes are key morphemes in English vocabulary that begin words. Read more #131 Sep 01, 16 epi- upon, over Prefixes are key morphemes in English vocabulary that begin words. Read more #130 May 16, 16 spir breathe The Latin root word spir means “breathe.” Read more #129 May 02, 16 volv roll The Latin root word volv and its variants volut and volt mean “roll” or “turn round.” Read more #128 Apr 15, 16 posit placed, put The Latin root word posit means “placed.” Read more #127 Apr 01, 16 voc call The Latin root word voc and its variant vok both mean “call.” Read more #126 Mar 15, 16 dia- through Prefixes are key morphemes in English vocabulary that begin words. Read more #125 Mar 01, 16 extra- outside Read more #124 Feb 15, 16 equ equal Read more #123 Feb 01, 16 fid dis- ego
5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday. Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means. But what does it actually tell you—or, more to the point, what does it not tell you? It doesn’t specify facts like the subject’s gender or the neighbor’s, or what direction the speaker traveled, or the nature of the neighbors’ relationship, or whether the food was just a cookie or a complex curry. The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us. A Language Where You’re Not the Center of the World English speakers and others are highly egocentric when it comes to orienting themselves in the world.