Vocabulary Building

Vocabulary

Word Formation

• Prefixes: added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning (e.g., un-, re-, non-)
• Suffixes: added to the end of a word to change its meaning (e.g., -ly, -ful, -less)
• Root words: core words that can be modified with prefixes and suffixes (e.g., run, read, write)
• Compounding: combining two or more words to create a new word (e.g., bookshelf, toothbrush)

Word Types

• Nouns: persons, places, things, and ideas (e.g., dog, city, love)
• Verbs: actions or states of being (e.g., run, eat, be)
• Adjectives: describe nouns or pronouns (e.g., happy, big, blue)
• Adverbs: describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (e.g., quickly, very, well)
• Pronouns: replace nouns in a sentence (e.g., he, she, it, they)
• Prepositions: show relationships between words (e.g., in, on, at, with)
• Conjunctions: connect words, phrases, or clauses (e.g., and, but, or, so)
• Interjections: express emotion or feeling (e.g., oh, wow, ouch)

Vocabulary Strategies

• Context clues: using surrounding words to understand the meaning of an unknown word
• Synonyms: words with similar meanings (e.g., happy → joyful, big → large)
• Antonyms: words with opposite meanings (e.g., hot → cold, fast → slow)
• Cognates: words that share a common origin or meaning (e.g., English → Spanish: father → padre)

Word Choice

• Connotation: emotional associations of words (e.g., home → warm, prison → cold)
• Denotation: literal meaning of words (e.g., dog → a specific animal)
• Idiomatic expressions: phrases with non-literal meanings (e.g., "kick the bucket" → die)
• Formal and informal language: using appropriate language for different contexts (e.g., formal: academic writing, informal: social media)