Jennifer Liriano

ESC 757
Morphology Blog

In order to effectively teach morphology as a way of improving academic vocabulary and

reading comprehension, one should follow these four principles. The first principle is where

morphology is taught within the context of vocabulary instruction. The second principle is where

morphology should be seen as a cognitive strategy. The third principle is where the background

of morphology is taught explicitly and within context. Finally, the fourth principle explores using

cognates with students who have developed knowledge of Spanish. All of these principles have

some benefits, but their use truly depends on the population of your students.

The first principle suggests that morphology and vocabulary go hand in hand. Words are

connected by their shared root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Therefore, if those parts are taught

then vocabulary can be attained more easily, meaning that students will have some understanding

of the meaning of various words through similar roots, suffixes, and/or prefixes. Furthermore,

teachers should have students become familiar with the use of a dictionary and context clues.

Lastly, the vocabulary words that are introduced should be meaningful and useful to the students,

which means that the words should appear in various content areas, and not just in one isolated

instance.

The second principle mentions that the teaching of morphology should not be memorized

through rules, but rather internalized through practice. Therefore, students should look at new

words, and try to find familiar roots, prefixes, or suffixes in it. Then, they should try to come to a

conclusion on what they believe is the definition of the word. Finally, they should see if that

definition would make sense for the context that the new word is in. As a result, by practicing
these explicit rules, students will be able to internalize the meaning of various words and become

familiar with similarities.

The third principle focuses on students learning about prefixes and suffixes, word

transformations, and roots, individually. The belief is that when students memorize these

morphological parts, that they will be able to apply it discovering the definition to any word.

This, in turn, will allow them to form patterns in their mind of similar words with similar

definitions. However, this seems very difficult to do on an elementary school level.

Last but not least, the fourth principle explains that if your students have sufficient

Spanish-speaking knowledge, they can use cognates to expand and understand vocabulary. In

this principle, students use their implicit knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and apply it to

English vocabulary. For example, the word decision is spelled the same in both Spanish and

English, and also has the same meaning. Therefore, students can easily define the word, if they

are aware of what to look out for. The only downside to this principle is that there are false

cognates, such as embarazada and embarrassed, which do not mean the same thing, as one

means being pregnant and the other is being self-conscious.

As a transitional bilingual teacher in a Spanish-only ELLs classroom, I would most align

with the fourth principle. The fourth principle mentions the use of cognates as a way to have

students become familiar with vocabulary. As a result, I believe that when students become

familiar with cognates, there is an easier transfer of knowledge from one language to another.

Furthermore, cognates can assist with the language barrier, since the concept promotes using the

home language to know the second language. Thus, I feel that my students can acquire a new

language more easily by becoming familiar with cognates. Coincidentally, I actually had my first
grammar and vocabulary lesson on cognates for this reason. Now, I am glad to know that it is a

morphological principle that has been proven to help students acquire more vocabulary.