Teach Secondary 13.7

DICTIONARY DEEP DIVE Join David Voisin on a rich, and sometimes surprising journey through the points at which literacy, language and vocabulary intersect... SAME ROOT, DIFFERENTWORDS PARDON MY FRENCH Having both Germanic and Latin roots, it’s often the case that Tier 2 words in English stem fromTier 1 words in French. One such word is the adjective ‘maladroit’, which can be employed for someone who has made a social ‘ faux pas ’ (wrong step). In French, it simply means ‘clumsy’ or, literally, ‘not straight’ or ‘bad on the right’. ‘ Droit ’ is the French translation of the English word ‘right’ (meaning ‘straight’, ‘legal right’, or ‘opposed to left’) and is found in the motto of the British Monarchy: ‘ Dieu et mon Droit ’. It’s therefore interesting to notice that a synonym of ‘maladroit’ is the word ‘ gauche ’, which itself is the French for the direction ‘left’. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS In the sitcom The Big Bang Theory , the character of Sheldon is depicted as being a genius with an acute aversion to sentences ending in prepositions. However, such dislike isn’t a mark of grammatical knowledge – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Language can be subdivided into rules, usage conventions and superstitions (or shibboleths). In this particular case we’re dealing with the latter, but that’s not to say that prepositions aren’t interesting. There are many in English – over 10 starting with ‘A’. They belong to the ‘closed class’, as new prepositions can’t be created. Prepositions can be single or complex (and can comprise more than one word, such as ‘on top of’. As their name indicates, they often have a spatial connotation. Present in many metaphors, such as ‘convey across’, they testify to the fact that spatial cognition predates verbal ability. When linked to a verb (phrasal verbs), some of these words cease qualifying as ‘prepositions’ and instead become ‘particles’ (‘get up’, ‘give away’…). Prepositions can, however, be attached to phrasal verbs, as in ‘To put up with’ – perhaps best illustrated byWinston Churchill’ s iconic quote, “ Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. ” TEACHING TIP: GIVE A MAN A FISH… Teach pupils a word and they’ll have one new entry to add to their lexicon. Teach them etymological roots and morphology, and they’ll have access to dozens of related words. Roots can be taught both explicitly and in isolation. My suggestion would be to introduce a particular root – such as ‘Tri’ – and give examples (triplets, tricycle, trident…), before then asking students to identify the meaning of the root. For a given meaning,make sure you explore other morphological variations (develop / developing / development / under- developed, etc…). Ask pupils to come up with definitions, examples and non-examples within sentences. As with anything, the sequencing of lessons is very important, since new roots can be featured alongside roots already covered (e.g. aqua/ duct, exo/thermic, bio/sphere…). One fun game could be to give learners a picture shown alongside its root, dominoes-style, and ask them to guess the word. ‘Fill in the gaps’ activities can work well, too. For instance, take five directive context sentences around one root, or around five different root words, with the roots between brackets as a clue. The beauty of etymological roots is that they work across many languages. David Voisin is a head of MFL Dec ember used to be the 10thmonth in the old calendar; the verb ‘ dec imate’ oncemeant ‘ Kill every tenthman ’... Inmaths, a dec agon has 10 sides; a dec imetre is a tenth of ametre The dec athlon consists of 10 sporting events; a dec ade is a 10-year period 17 teachwire.net/secondary