with the general characteristics described in the center column. For example, a student wants to create a metaphor using source. He completes the left and center columns of the matrix as shown in table 2.5. Then, he looks for a term that could be equated with source at an abstract level. The student decides to use the term character as the second term in the metaphor and fills in the right column of the matrix to explain his reasoning.
Table 2.5: Metaphor Matrix for Source
After completing a matrix like the one in table 2.5, the student decides to phrase his metaphor as follows: Characters are the sources of stories. To explain the abstract relationship, the student uses the general descriptions listed in his matrix.
Because metaphor activities ask students to examine the abstract or nonliteral elements of a term, they are an excellent way to help students deepen their vocabulary knowledge about words they know at a surface level.
Creating Analogies
To create an analogy, students must identify and describe a relationship between two items or concepts. For example, “Betty is to Jeff as oil is to water” implies that in the same way that oil repels water, Betty repels Jeff. This sort of analysis requires in-depth examination of the nuances of relationships between terms. There are several ways in which a teacher can prompt students to generate analogies. For example, an ELA teacher could provide the first term of each analogy pair and ask students to fill in the second term in each pair, as follows:
An adjective is to a _________ as an adverb is to a _________.
A student responds by saying, “An adjective is to a noun as an adverb is to a verb.” He might extend his answer by explaining that adjectival phrase and adverbial phrase could be substituted for adjective and adverb in the analogy.
Alternatively, the teacher could provide both terms in the first pair and ask students to create the second pair, as follows:
Prefix is to suffix as _________ is to _________.
A student responds by saying, “Prefix is to suffix as first names are to last names because first names come at the beginning of your full name and last names come at the end of your full name.” She then extends it by comparing a root word to a person’s middle name.
Another useful strategy is to ask students to label the relationship between two sets of terms. Visual analogy diagrams are useful for this purpose, as shown in figure 2.6.
Figure 2.6: Visual analogy diagram.
In figure 2.6, the student labeled the relationship described by the analogy “an adjective is to a noun as an adverb is to a verb” as descriptive. Another student might label the same relationship modifying or adding information.
Examining Affixes and Root Words
Understanding word parts and how words are constructed has been shown to have a correlation of 0.83 with vocabulary knowledge (Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003). As explained in chapter 1, correlations that are close to 1.00 indicate strong relationships between two variables. So, as students’ understanding of word parts and word construction increases, so does their vocabulary knowledge. Some (Adams, 1990) have cautioned against teaching word parts to students learning to read, because the segmentation of a word into syllables does not always match the segmentation of a word into word parts. For example, a student learning to read would probably try to segment the word information into syllables (in-for-ma-tion) to decode it. However, its morphological segmentation is different (in-form-ation), and this difference could be confusing to an immature reader. For confident readers who have reached a level of automaticity with decoding longer words, however, understanding roots and affixes can help them remember words they have learned and figure out the meaning of unfamiliar terms. Stahl (2005) explained,
A discussion of word parts should become an integral part of word-learning instruction. Discussions that include stories about word origins and derivations can stir interest in learning more about language—that is, build word consciousness. Stories that help children to see and understand how similarities in word spellings may show similarities in meaning, may solidify and expand their word knowledge. For example, the seemingly dissimilar words loquacious, colloquium, and elocution all come from the root word loq, meaning “to talk.” Knowing this connection may make it easier for children to remember the words. (p. 111)
There are three distinct types of word parts: prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Prefixes, which come at the beginning of a word, typically add to or change the meaning of the root word to which they are attached. Suffixes, which come at the end of a word, typically affect the root word’s part of speech. Collectively, prefixes and suffixes are referred to as affixes. Root words are often based on Greek or Latin and carry specific meanings.
Affixes
In 1989, Thomas White, Joanne Sowell, and Alice Yanagihara examined the words in The American Heritage Word Frequency Book (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971) to identify the most frequently used prefixes and suffixes in English. They found that the top twenty prefixes and suffixes accounted for 97–99 percent of all words with affixes (as shown in table 2.6). It is interesting to note that the three most frequently occurring prefixes are used in 51 percent of all prefixed words and the three most frequently occurring suffixes account for 65 percent of all words with suffixes.
Table 2.6: Frequently Occurring Prefixes and Suffixes
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