PEARTREE LIFE: Experiencing Languages

Expand your vocabulary!

There are more than 170,000 words in the English language according to the Oxford dictionary. An average native speaker would be familiar with 20 to 35 thousand. A B1 (pre-intermediate) student needs to be able to identify about 2,000 of these. No wonder students might feel intimidated when learning vocabulary.


Last Thursday, in English for Lunch, we started a new series of studies on how to expand your vocabulary knowledge by using word families. If we look at some words in English, we will soon realise that they can be used as a base to form new words by adding particles that come before (prefixes) or after them (suffixes).

For example, if we look at the word respect, which is used both as a noun and verb in English, we can think of the following words:

Respectful (adj)
Disrespectful (adj)
Respectable (adj)
Disrespect (verb/noun)
Respecting (gerund)
Respected (past and past participle form)

This can be an excellent way for students to learn more about the language structure and expand their vocabulary.

Can you think of the adjectives you can create with the following nouns by adding something to the end of the word:

rain, friend, hope, practice, history, science, moment 

How many words more can you think of with the same ending?

Let us know in our next English for Lunch!

Answers: 
Rain
Friendly
Hopeful, hopeless
Practical 
Historic, historical
Scientific
Momentary 

Check the meaning of these words and how to use them!
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About Peartree Languages

Peartree Languages is a language school located in Cardiff.

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