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Home / Issues / № 2, 2015

Philological sciences

AFFIXATION IN TEACHING WORD-BUILDING
E. Dmitrieva

            Teaching word-building is one of the important tasks of teaching English as a foreign language. Good word-wuilding skills enable a student to use the language more independently, to experiment with the language, to develop conextual guess and thus to enrich their vocabulary at a better pace. Word-building is tested (as a separate part or as a part of an integrated task, such as a  structure task)  in major international exams, such as FCE, CAE, CPE, TOEFL. In the Russian Federation it is also included into state exams at schools. However, teaching word-building is often reduced to the reference of some affixes to different parts of speech, and exam tips mostly focus on the correct grammatical form of the words.

            Such issues should surely be taken into consideration, as well as some interchanges (such as in long-length), conversion (which is, however, rarely tested, but with which students should be familiar) and word-building synonyms (unlimited - limitless). Yet we believe, that great attention is to be paid to affixal semantics and collocation. Further we offer an example of how the material could be presented (in this paper we focus solely on noun-building suffixes):

 

Suffix

Meaning

Сочетаемость

1

er

Doer (builder)

Instrument

(knocker)

Dweller

(Londoner)

Characteristic

(fresher)

 

Verbs, nouns, adjectives

 

2

or

Doer (collector)

Instrument

(refrigerator)

Verbs (mostly with  -ate и -t)

3

ee

Object

(trainee)

Transitive verbs with the meaning  «give»

4

ist

Doer (pianist)

Follower

(communist)

Nouns denoting instruments, sciences, political  beliefs.  

Adjectives, denoting some trends

 

5

ite

Dweller (Sydneyite)

Follower

(Marxite)

Proper names

6

man

Dweller (Englishman)

Doer (watchman)

 

Verbs, nouns, adjectives

7

ess

Feminisation

(hostess)

Animate nouns, nouns denoting jobs

8

ette

Belittling

(novelette)

Nouns

9

ing

Action

(meeting)

Result

(painting)

Verbs

10

al

Action

(approval)

Verbs, mostly with -e

11

ness

Abstract notion

(kindness)

Simple adjectives or adjectives with  -y, -ful, -ous, -ive, -ed, -ish, -ward, -less, -ary, -ant, -worthy

12

ity

Abstract notion

(eternity)

Adjectives with -al, -ial, -an, -ian, -ar, -able, -ed, -ous, -ose, -ical, -ive

13

ism

Theory

(communism)

Quality

(heroism)

Proper names

Adjectives denoting quality and language

 

14

ship

State/quality

(leadership)

Skill

(sportsmanship)

Nouns denoting a person

15

dom

Unity

(kingdom)

Nouns denoting a person

16

hood

State/quality

(brotherhood)

Nouns denoting a person with the reference  to the family, age, position

17

(c)ation

Action

(admiration)

Verbs with  -ify, -ize, -ate and some simple verbs

18

ment

No special meaning

(department)

2-syllable verbs with the stresses 2nd syllable, verbs  with  en-, em-, be-, -le, -er, -ish

19

ery

State/quality

(misery)

Unity

(cutlery)

Nouns denoting a person, an object, an animal

20

acy

State/quality

(delicacy)

Unity

(burocracy)

Adjectives with  -ate

Nouns denoting a job or an occupation

21

age

State/quality

(homage)

Unity

(readerage)

Result

(leakage)

Nouns denoting a position or occupation, a concrete object

Simple verbs

 

 

            As we can see from the table above nounal suffixes vary in semantics and collocation. Students are to be encouraged to learn first of all the semantical differences, that will make the choice of the cjrrect suffix much narrower. If there are stilll several synonyms collocation is to be considered. However, some suffixes still have synonyms (such as -ite and - ist), but in this case using any of them will be correct.

            As we can see the system of word-building has its logic and teaching it can be not only intuitive (although a lot of authentic reading can beneficially make some choices intuitive).



References:
1. Cambridge English. TKT Modules 1-3. Handbook for Teachers. UCLES, 2014

2. Каращук П.М. Словообразование английского языка. М.:Высшая школа,1977

3. Мешков О.Д. Словообразование современного английского языка. М.:Наука, 1975



Bibliographic reference

E. Dmitrieva AFFIXATION IN TEACHING WORD-BUILDING. International Journal Of Applied And Fundamental Research. – 2015. – № 2 –
URL: www.science-sd.com/461-24818 (22.12.2024).