The Importance of Teaching Vocabulary
From the very start of a child’s education, it’s extremely important to work vocabulary into their learning experience. It’s an important focus in English, or any language. However, there is a lot more to vocabulary and words in general than just their pronunciation and their roots.
All words have:
- Meaning
- Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Uses
The meaning of words is often found in its root. Most words have prefixes and suffixes. Traditional words, especially, all have meanings and are made up of smaller words.
These are from traditional Greek and Latin words. For example, the root word ‘carn’ can turn into carnivorous, carnal and reincarnate. Carn, the root, means “flesh”. Whatever is added onto the word, changes its meaning completely.
The phonology of words is “the system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language” according to the Oxford dictionary. The best way to explain phonology is how you pronounce the letter ‘a’ in certain words vs others. For example, the word “rate” versus the word “rat”.
The morphology of words is the study of words and their parts. For example, the reference in Merriam-Webster is ‘according to English morphology, the third person singular present tense of a verb is formed by adding -s.’ Basically, in its essence, morphology is about what changes one word into another, with a totally different meaning.
The syntax of words is defined by Oxford dictionary as “the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.” It is: subject + verb + direct object formula in a sentence. At the root of understanding syntax, you have to understand independent clauses and dependent clauses. “An independent clause is a full sentence. It does not need to be joined to any other clauses because it contains all the information necessary to be a complete sentence.” Dependent clauses, on the other hand, are not a complete thought. These all have to come together to form the syntactic structure.
The uses of words are pretty straightforward. By the time children are able to speak, they can mostly understand words and their uses. However, the further their education continues, the more that they will realize a word can have more than one use.
Since there are so many moving parts when it comes to the English language, and all other languages in the world, it’s extremely important to have an understanding of words and where they come from. It is never too early to start learning!
If you [or your child] are struggling with English and vocabulary, call us for a free consultation! Miles Smart Tutoring is available to help with any and all subjects.Visit our website https://milessmarttutoring.com or call us at (813) 328-3036.
