Teach Secondary - Issue 14.6

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 If you’re a guest at a soirée (French for ‘evening’), the host of said social gathering may have organised for some ‘ amuse-bouche ’ to be served. Literally meaning ‘mouth amusers’, these little one-bite delights may include a variety of sweet or savoury canapés to showcase the chef’s skills and creativity. Petit fours (‘little ovens’), meanwhile, tend to be mini pastries, while the French for ‘baked’ is the word ‘ cuit ’ – which is present in the word biscuit, meaning ‘baked twice’. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Recent studies show that morphology plays a crucial role in reading comprehension, given the ubiquity of morphologically complex words in children’s books. Morphology is the study of word architecture. Contrary to what some people think, it’s not independent from grammar; it’s a branch of it.While syntax examines how words are organised to convey meaning, morphology helps us understand how the words’ building blocks interact, both grammatically and semantically. There are two categories in morphology – inflectional and derivational. The former is about changing words using affixes to modify a word grammatically, without altering its core meaning (e.g. by adding ‘ ...ing ’ or ‘...ed’ to a verb, or ‘ s ’ to a noun). The latter is more about changing the lexical category of the word – changing ‘construct’ to ‘deconstruction’, for instance. In English, inflectional morphology is usually assimilated early, around the age of 4. Derivational morphology, being cognitively more challenging, tends to only become accessible much later. There are, however, some problems and exceptions – among them, ‘false’ affixes, such as ‘ antiquated ’. which doesn’t feature the prefix [ anti ] but is rather related to antique . Another issue is that many ‘bound stems’ are meaningless in isolation, such [ a ][ mnesia ]. This is why reading alone isn’t sufficient to properly understand morphology – it needs to be taught explicitly, and in a judicious sequence. TEACHING TIP: ROTATION OF THE PROPS At the heart of ‘imagination’ lies the word ‘ image ’. Despite there being areas in the brain dedicated to language (such as Broca’s area), the visual cortex plays a preponderant part in language – not just for reading, but also in the visual representation of objects, concepts, events and scenes. A well-decorated classroom can present many advantages, and carefully curated displays can certainly assist with learning. Pictures can help with the teaching of words, dual coding being a powerful didactic tool. A picture of Yoda can illustrate what a ‘sagacious’ Jedi is. An image of Scrooge in Disney’s A Christmas Carol perfectly encapsulates the meaning of the adjective ‘irascible’.Will Smith plays a ‘jovial’ genie. It doesn’t have to be just words – useful prefixes, suffixes and root words are also worth displaying for reference. But what about a rotation? Once a set of adjectives or sceneries have been fully exploited for a topic, or once classes start studying a novel from a very different setting, it only makes sense to replace those displayed illustrations and key words, even if just temporarily, until they’re covered again or require revisiting. Just like a curriculum, with a little planning you can maximise the potential impact of your classroom displays and props. David Voisin is a head of MFL An oct opus is a cephalopod with 8 limbs Oct ogenarians are between 80 and 89 years old MMA fighters fight in the ‘ oct agon’ – an 8-sided ring 11 teachwire.net/secondary