How to Teach Longer, More Complex Words

After third grade students increasingly need to read, spell and understand longer, complex words. Here is research-based guidelines for how to teach longer, more complex words:

1) Longer words (i.e., with three or more syllables) tend to have more regular letter-sound correspondences than do one- and two-syllable words, but students will need specific decoding and word-analysis skills to read, spell and understand them. (Venezky, 1999, p. 241)

2) Teaching how syllable structure relates to vowel pronunciation, as well as practice with syllable stress patterns can help students divide words in to syllables. However, Venezky (1999) cautions: "Teaching formal rules for dividing words into syllables is of doubtful value." (p. 241) Venezky advocates introducing common affixes (prefixes and suffixes), with the object being "...not to teach all possible affixes, but to sensitize the students to look for recurring prefixes and suffixes and to use this knowledge to decode longer words." (p. 241)

3) Teaching the 20 most common prefixes and the 20 most common suffixes will introduce the student to more than 95% of the affixed words in printed school English. (White et al., 1999) See below for a list of the most common affixes and the Levels at which they are explicitly introduced in Lexercise.

4) Bowers and Cooke (2012) advocate a "guided scientific approach" to teaching and learning word structure, identifying words' meaning elements (i.e., prefixes, bases, suffixes) following a formal approach called Structured Word Inquiry. (Bowers & Cooke, 2012).

REFERENCES:

Bowers, P. N. and Cooke, G. (2012). Morphology and the Common Core: Building Students' Understanding of the Written Word. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Vol.38 (4), 31-35.

Venezky, R.L. (1999). The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography. New York: The Guilford Press.

White, T.G., Sowell, V., and Yanagihara, A. (1999). Teaching elementary students to use word-part clues. The Reading Teacher, 42. 303-308.

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PREFIXES

Rank (%)	PREFIX	MEANING	Example	LEXERCISE LEVEL
1 – 26%	un-	not, opposite	unsaddle	19
2- 14%	re-	again, back	repay	19
3- 11%	in, im, ir, ill	not , opposite	impolite	19
4- 7%	dis	not , opposite	discover	19
5- 4%	en, em	cause to	enjoy	20
6- 4%	non	not , opposite	nonfat	20
7- 4%	in, im	in, into	inside	20
8- 3%	over	too much, above	overdo	n/a
9- 3%	mis	wrongly	mistake	19
10 -3%	sub	under, lower	subtract	23
11- 3%	pre	before	prepare	31
12- 3%	inter	between, among	interrupt	30
13- 3%	fore	before	foretell	20
14- 2%	de	opposite of	descend	19
15- 2%	trans	across	transport	20
16- 1%	super	above, beyond	superman	21
17- 1%	semi	half	semicircle	21
18- 1%	anti	against	antiwar	21
19- 1%	mid	middle	midsection	21
20- 1%	under	too little, below	underdone	21

SUFFIXES

Rank - %	SUFFIX	MEANING	Example	LEXERCISE LEVEL
1 – 31%	-s, -es	plural (nouns)	cats	1 & 3
2- 20%	-ed	past tense (verbs)	batted	5
3- 14%	-ing	progressive ( verbs)	batting	5
4- 7%	-ly	characteristic	playing	21
5- 4%	-er, -or	person connected with	sailor	22
6- 4%	-ion	act, process	action	29
7- 2%	-ible, -able	can be done	likeable	25
8- 1%	-al, -ial	having characteristic of	final	n/a
9- 1%	-y	characterized by	funny	21
10- 1 %	-ness	state or condition of	happiness	30
11- 1%	-ity, -ty	state of	activity	21
12- 1%	-ment	action or process	enjoyment	18
13- 1%	-ic	having characteristic of	comic	23
14- 1%	-ous	possessing qualities of	joyous	22 & 29
15- 1%	-en	made of	wooden	22
16- 1%	-er	comparative	bigger	15
17- 1%	-ive	adjective form of noun	attractive	24
18- 1%	-ful	full of	healthful	18
19- 1%	-less	without	lifeless	18
20- 1%	-est	comparative	smallest	15
	-s	3^rd person agreement		3
	-‘s	possessive		4
	-s’	plural possessive		10
	-en	past participle		17

How to Teach Longer, More Complex Words

PREFIXES

SUFFIXES

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