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Comprehensive Vocabulary

Morphological Awareness is the new buzz phrase to describe the connections students make among phonology, orthography, and semantics.

Older, close-to-retirement teachers or parochial school expatriates remember the value of their own high school Latin classes. Both grammar and cognates significantly improved their writing and vocabulary. They swear by it. Also those colleagues trying to make a few extra dollars by teaching SAT or ACT prep classes will affirm the importance of learning Greek and Latin word parts for the reading sections of these tests. So, high school 9-12 CCSS Standards strongly emphasize Greek and Latinates, right? Wrong. There are no Greek and Latin vocabulary Standards for Grades 9-12.

Interestingly, the CCSS vocabulary Standards dealing with Greek and Latin affixes and bases begin at 4^th Grade and end at 8^th Grade. Here are these Standards for each of these grade levels:

Common Core Greek and Latin Morphology

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L.4.4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 4 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. Use context (e.g., definitions, examples, or restatements in text) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

• Use common, grade-appropriate Greek and Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word (e.g., telegraph, photograph, autograph).
• Now, recent reading research has supported emphasizing the morphological approach to vocabulary development in elementary and middle school.

Why is it important to study Greek and Latin word parts?

• Over 60% of the words students will encounter in school textbooks have recognizable word parts; and many of these Latin and Greek roots (Nagy, Anderson,Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989).
• Latin and Greek prefixes, roots, and suffixes have predictable spelling patterns.(Rasinski & Padak, 2001; Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton & Johnston, 2000).
• Content area vocabulary is largely Greek and Latin-based and research supports this instruction, especially for struggling readers (Harmon, Hedrick & Wood, 2005).
• Many words from Greek and Latin word parts are included in “Tier Two” and “Tier Three” wordsthat Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002) have found to be essential to vocabulary word study.
• Knowing Greek and Latin word parts helps students recognize and gain clues to understanding of other words that use known affixes and roots (Nagy & Scott, 2000).
• “One Latin or Greek root or affix (word pattern) aids understanding (as well as decoding and encoding) of 20 or more English words.” 
• “Since Spanish is also a Latin-based language, Latin (and Greek) can be used as a bridge to help Spanish speaking students use knowledge of their native language to learn English.” 
• Learning Greek and Latin affixes and roots may help reduce the literacy gap.

So, which Greek and Latin prefixes, suffixes, and bases should we teach?

It makes sense to begin with the most commonly used word parts. Free bases (those which stand on their own as base words, prefixes, and suffixes. Bound bases (morphemes which require the addition of an affix to form a word) shortly thereafter.

Additionally, here are the most useful Greek and Latin word part lists I’ve found:

• http://www.learnthat.org/pages/view/roots.html
• http://www.learnthat.org/pages/view/suffix.html

So, how many Greek and Latinates should we teach per week? I’d say from two to seven, depending upon grade level. Less is more. The more word play, analogies, writing, and games the better.

So how should we introduce the Greek and Latin word parts?

Introduce two Greek and Latin word parts that fit together to form one word. Tell students to write down this word. Ask students to brainstorm which words they know that include each of the word parts. Write their example words on the board. Direct students to guess the part of speech and definition of the word formed from the word parts and to write down their guesses next to their vocabulary word.

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For full-year vocabulary programs which include multiple meaning words (L.4.a.), Greek and Latin morphology with Morphology Walls (L.4.a.), figures of speech (L.5.a.), words with special relationships (L.5.b.), words with connotative meanings (L.5.c.), and academic language words (L.6.0), check out the assessment-based grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 Comprehensive Vocabulary.

Get the Grades 4,5,6,7,8 Vocabulary Sequence of Instruction FREE Resource:

Get the Greek and Latin Morphology Walls FREE Resource:

Get the Diagnostic Academic Language Assessment FREE Resource:

Literacy Centers, Reading, Spelling/Vocabulary, Study Skills, Writing Academic Language, Academic Vocabulary, Common Core, Common Core Greek and Latinates, Common Core State Standards, Common Core Vocabulary, Greek and Latin, language standards, Language Strand, Mark Pennington, Tier Three Words, vocabulary standards

Comprehensive Vocabulary

Teaching Academic Language Words is essential to improving reading comprehension and writing sophistication.

The principal authors of the Common Core State Standards have rightly criticized the dumbing-down of reading text in Appendix A of the Common Core document. Citing the research detailed in the 2006 ACT, Inc., report titled Reading Between the Lines that high school student scores in reading comprehension have dropped over recent years, the authors pinpoint two primary reasons for this trend. First, the level of K-12 text complexity has decreased. Second, too many teachers are reading novels out loud and explicating line by line such that their students have little practice in independently accessing meaning from text.

Of course, pinpointing text complexity as a problem begs the question of just what constitutes complex text. To their credit, the authors do a nice job evaluating reading level formulas and analyzing the semantic and syntactic features that contribute to reading levels. Although they spend some time discussing the impact of syllable number and word length, the authors fail to adequately bullet-point the chief variable in text complexity: the words themselves. To be fair, the authors certainly do emphasize the importance of vocabulary throughout the rest of the Common Core document.

So, which words make reading text complex? And, if we know what they are, how can we teach them most effectively? I try to answer the latter question in a complementary article, How to Teach the Common Core Vocabulary Standards, but following is part of my answer to the first question.

To teach the types of words that are included in complex reading text, the Common Core document lists its primary Vocabulary Standards in the English Language Arts Language Strand. The Standards focus on these kinds of words: multiple meaning words (L.4.a.), words with Greek and Latin roots and affixes (L.4.a.), figures of speech (L.5.a.), words with special relationships (L.5.b.), words with connotative meanings (L.5.c.), and academic language words (L.6.0).

So as not to chew on too much for one article, let’s focus on the academic language words (L.6.0).

These Tier 2 (generalizable) and Tier 3 (domain-specific) words (Beck, McKeown, Kucan) require explicit instruction and practice in a variety of reading and writing contexts. These words are not incidental vocabulary that will naturally be acquired through “free choice” independent reading of novels. Indeed, academic language words show up most of the time in complex expository text.

I can hear English language-arts teachers thinking… “Isn’t the Common Core all about sharing the literacy load? Shouldn’t history and science handle this complex expository text?”

Yes, the Common Core authors view literacy development as a mutual responsibility of all educational stakeholders. Yes, history, science, and technology teachers need to teach domain-specific academic vocabulary. However, there is a difference between academic language and academic vocabulary. The latter is subject/content specific; the former is not. For example, tectonic plates will appear frequently in science textbooks, but rarely elsewhere. However, the word analyze will appear frequently in science textbooks and frequently in all other expository text. It’s the academic language that English-language arts teachers need to teach.

So, this is why the Common Core State Standards has begun the “Great Shift” from narrative to expository reading. Reading more challenging expository novels, articles, documents, reports, etc. will certainly help students implicitly learn much academic language; however, academic language word lists coupled with meaningful instruction do have their place. So, which word lists make sense?

Common Core Academic Language Words

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Dr. Averil Coxhead, senior lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies developed and evaluated The Academic Word List (AWL) for her MA thesis. The list has 570 word families which were selected according to certain criteria:

• The word families must occur in over half of the 28 academic subject areas. “Just over 94% of the words in the AWL occur in 20 or more subject areas. This principle ensures that the words in the AWL are useful for all learners, no matter what their area of study or what combination of subjects they take at tertiary level.”
• “The AWL families had to occur over 100 times in the 3,500,000 word Academic Corpus in order to be considered for inclusion in the list. This principle ensures that the words will be met a reasonable number of times in academic texts.” The academic corpus refers to a computer-generated list of most-frequently occurring academic words.
• “The AWL families had to occur a minimum of 10 times in each faculty of the Academic Corpus to be considered for inclusion in the list. This principle ensures that the vocabulary is useful for all learners.”

Words Excluded From the Academic Word List

• “Words occurring in the first 2,000 words of English.”
• “Narrow range words. Words which occurred in fewer than 4 faculty sections of the Academic Corpus or which occurred in fewer than 15 of the 28 subject areas of the Academic Corpus were excluded because they had narrow range. Technical or specialist words often have narrow range and were excluded on this basis.”
• “Proper nouns. The names of places, people, countries, for example, New Zealand, Jim Bolger and Wellington were excluded from the list.”
• “Latin forms. Some of the most common Latin forms in the Academic Corpus were et al, etc, ie, and ibid.” http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information

The Academic Word list has been ordered into lists by frequency of use. Why not teach the academic language words that appear most often in academic text?

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For full-year vocabulary programs which include multiple meaning words (L.4.a.), Greek and Latin morphology with Morphology Walls (L.4.a.), figures of speech (L.5.a.), words with special relationships (L.5.b.), words with connotative meanings (L.5.c.), and academic language words (L.6.0), check out the assessment-based grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 Comprehensive Vocabulary.

Get the Grades 4,5,6,7,8 Vocabulary Sequence of Instruction FREE Resource:

Get the Greek and Latin Morphology Walls FREE Resource:

Get the Diagnostic Academic Language Assessment FREE Resource:

eets FREE Resource:

Get the Grade 8 Vocabulary Worksheets FREE Resource:

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