Morpheme
Mania
NILD Canada Spring Conference
April 22,23 2016
Toronto, ON
Diane VandeMeent, CET
By the end of the hour you will
understand:
the importance of teaching morphology
for reading, spelling, and vocabulary
Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek and French
influences on morphemes
Three things to (never) say to your
students
How to teach morphology to students of
different ages …using Structured Word
Inquiry (Word Matrix, Word Sums)
The Chaos
1
Structured Word Inquiry
SWI -- helps break down the idea that ‘English is just
crazy, you will have to memorize that word”
Richard Venezky
“Orthography is not meant to represent sound but
meaning”
Carol Chomsky
“..can’t pronounce a word until you see how it is
interacting with the affix, then sound it out” Pg. 298
2
David Crystal
“There is no question that if you’ve learned Latin, it
will help your English Spelling. The English system is
really highly orderly highly consistent, highly
predictable”
Gina Cooke
“ All stories are made of words…but all words have
a story.”
3
Vocabulary
Morpheme
– smallest meaningful unit of
language
Morphology –
the study of meaningful
parts of words and how they are
combined
Morphemes
“When
a student first learns to read,
phonemic awareness becomes all
important as the young brain tries to
match letters to sounds. But by grade 3,
morphological awareness begins to
surpass phonemic awareness in the
development of decoding skills.”
(Singson, Mahony, and Mann, 2000)
Beyond the Word
Lyn Anderson blog
4
Miraculous Morphemes
Kelly
Literacy WorldWide
.
Linguistics is a science, and orthography should be taught that way.
Morphemes
Free
Bound
Content
Prefixes
Function
Bound
Roots
Suffixes
Inflectional
Derivational
Inflectional Morphemes
Show possession
Number
Tense
Comparison
5
Derivational Morphemes
Morphemes
are added to other
morphemes and a new word is derived
- Philosopher (n)
- Philosophize (v)
- Philosophical (adj)
Often changes part of speech or
grammatical class
Derivational suffixes
Noun
Suffix – ment, -
ness-age
Adjective
Verb
Suffix – ate, - ize, -
ify
Suffix –
Adverb
Suffix -ly
-ive, -al, -ous, -ic
Layers of Language
Greek
Latin
Anglo Saxon
6
Make words with these word
parts:
- re
- graphic
- geo
- earth
- tract
- bio
- ex
- able
- logy
- port
- quake
- worm
Anglo Saxon: quake, earthquake,
earthworm
Latin: export, report, extract
Greek: geographic, biology, biographic
Anglo-Saxon Layer
Oldest
layer of English
Includes:
-
Compound words
Prefixes / Prepositions
Suffixes
Non-phonetic Words
7
Latin Layer
o
o
o
o
o
o
Language of scholars, nobles, high class
Use of the schwa
Root is stressed and easy to sound out
Prefixes such as re, sub, dis, per
Suffixes change the parts of speech
Vocabulary of science, math, social
studies
Greek Layer
Modern scientific and mathematical
terms
Combined with other morphemes of
equal importance
Unique spelling patterns
- ph/f and ch/k
- y as long or short i
Homonyms
Write
Right
Wright
rite
WHY are they spelled
differently?
8
The job of non syllabic ‘e’
Please
Judgement
Grudge
Snooze
Create
Vague
Ladle
Teethe
dense
sauce
Engage Students in
Morpheme DISCOVERY
Discover Morpheme meanings
Use www.neilkramsden.co.uk/spelling/searcher
- instruct
- instruction
- construct
- construction
- reconstruct
- structure
- struct mean ____to build ________
Teach students to think linguistically
9
Engage students in Morpheme
Discovery
Teach
derivational family members
together in spelling and vocabulary
Which is correct?
Persperation or perspiraton
Plesure or pleasure
Electrisity or electricity
Comprable or comparable
Instruction
should be more effective if
lessons coordinate context, semantics,
morphology, orthography and phonology
because that appears to be what the
mind does to make sense of written
language (Nagy, Berninger, Abbott,
Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003). The mind also
considers syntax, including the morphosyntactic properties of words (e.g.,
words that end with the suffix -ness tend to be abstract nouns--concepts,
feelings, ideas--as in happiness, sadness, peacefulness, thankfulness).
10
More…engaging students in
Morpheme Discovery
When a student questions why the ‘g’ is in sign,
investigate! Use Structured Word Inquiry instead of
lists!
(wordworkskingston.com)
Changing the grammatical role of a word
- Add prefixes and suffixes onto a word and
determining the new part of speech
More strategies to Develop
Morphology
Use www.Etymonline.com
Use dictionaries and reference aids
Use information about word parts (morphemes)
Use Context cues to derive meaning
WORDS from Marcia Henry
Use word searcher on line
Collaborative ‘word web’ creations
Engage Students In
Morpheme Discovery
Post
a root of the week
word walls and word maps
Utilize
Friendless
unfriendly
friend
friendship
befriend
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References
Speech
to Print by Louisa Moats
by Marcia Henry
Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language
Skills by Suzanne Carreker and Judith
Birsch
Solving Language Difficulties by Amey
Steer, Caroline Peck, and Linda Kahn
Words
References
Sounds of Meaning by Kristin Barbour, Kathy
Keafer, Rachel Velez
www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/searcher/
(Word searcher,suffix checker, mini matrixmaker, word microscope and more)
IDA fact sheet, http:eida.org/fact-sheets/
Learning By Design, Jan Wasowicz
Real Spelling, videos on youtube
Gina Cooke
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References
Literacyworldwide.org
Real
Spellers – www.realspelling.org
Literacy Centre –
www.wordwordskingston.com
LEX –
www.linguisteducatorexchange.com
Online Etymology Dictionary –
www.etymonline.com
WordWorks
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