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By Doug Buehl
The Milwaukee Brewers enter the 2008 season with excellent young hitters, a deep starting pitching staff, and a much improved bullpen. That the Brewers will be one of baseball’s finest teams is incontrovertible.
Incontrovertible? What exactly do we mean by incontrovertible? Let’s try unpacking that word and get at the ‘root’ of its meaning. First, let’s drop off the ending “ible,” which I recognize as a suffix. Then we’ll prune back at the beginning of the word, eliminating “in” and “contro,” which are prefix forms. I’m left with “vert.” What other words have that part? “Convert” comes to mind, which means to turn something into something else. I also think of “revert,” which means to change back again. So I know that “vert” has something to do with movement. If I reattach “contro,” I get “controvert,” which is very close to “controversy,” which signals that people can not settle on the way to move, they are not in agreement. Because “in” means not, it seems that incontrovertible might mean that the statement about the Brewers is not open to movement, it is not controversial, it is an analysis no one could argue with.
Okay, so maybe it is not incontrovertible that the Brewers will be a winning team this year. There are probably few things we can think of that are so clearly evident to everyone that they could be classified as incontrovertible.
Our opening example reflects a window on the reasoning we engage in as readers when we have to piece together an understanding in the midst of unfamiliar vocabulary. On one level, we were able to derive some hunches about the author’s statement by following the logic of the message: the author seemed to strongly believe the Brewers would be a good team and offered evidence to back up that assertion. In other words, we used context clues.
But we were also able to pick the word apart and analyze its meaningful elements. Although we may not have brought precise knowledge of the word’s root (vert – to turn), we were able to connect to other well-known words constructed with the same root (convert and revert), enabling us to come up with a reasonable theory about the core meaning of incontrovertible.
As underscored in previous Reading Room columns over the years, vocabulary knowledge is a key facet of comprehension. To a significant degree, the recognition of the meanings of familiar words, coupled with the ability to theorize the meanings of unfamiliar words, determines whether a reader will successfully comprehend a written text.
The Strategy
Teaching vocabulary strategies that help students detect meaningful word parts is referred to as generative vocabulary instruction — students become skilled in generating possible meanings of a string of new words based on their knowledge of roots and affixes. Templeton (2008) recommends several steps for generative vocabulary instruction.
Step 1: Start with the basic premise that “if you learn one word, you actually learn ten.” Let’s return to one of our opening examples. When students learn the word convert, they have in effect also learned converts, converted, converting, converter, converters, and unconverted, a natural byproduct of their encountering these forms of the word in their reading. However, Templeton cautions that other less familiar forms may be overlooked by students, and should also be displayed when students are learning a useful ‘base’ word like convert: convertible, convertibility, convertibleness, inconvertible, inconvertibility, unconvertible, reconvert, reconvertible. If the teacher does not intentionally include these words in the conversations about convert, then many students will not notice their relationship to a word they have come to know. As a result, students are more likely to skip the word as “too hard” when they encounter reconvert in a text, even though they have constructed sufficient knowledge about the ‘base’ word to successfully hypothesize a probable meaning.
As students examine the variations on how convert might appear in a larger word, ask them to apply knowledge of suffixes and prefixes to speculate on possible meanings of these more sophisticated forms. In addition, use the opportunity to teach the root in the base word—in this case “vert” which means “to turn.” So if convert means “to turn something into something else,” then convertible can be explained as “something that is capable of being turned into something else.”
A highly useful web resource for generative vocabulary instruction is onelook.com. Teachers can quickly generate lists of words that share the same base word or root that can be then integrated into word study lessons. (For example, *convert* yielded 29 common words that contain convert, and *vert* listed well over 300, some of which bore no relationship to “to turn” but most of which did meaningfully share this Latin root.)
Step 2: Next, take frequent opportunities to model vocabulary problem-solving using knowledge of a key base word and root. Here is another example of a potentially difficult word for students:
The negotiations finally were called to a halt because both sides proved to be intractable.
Templeton recommends modeling a four-step analysis procedure for tackling new words like intractable:
First, ask yourself if there are any prefixes or suffixes (parts added to the beginnings and ends of words). If you find some, take them off (erase in and able):
Second, notice what is left. In this case, the long word is built around the root tract. Ask yourself what you know about this base word or root. Where have you seen it before?
Third, think of a familiar key word that contains that word part: tract. How about tractor? You know that a tractor “pulls things.”
Fourth, put the affixes back on—the suffix and the prefix. Develop your hunch about the word’s meaning, and see if the sentence makes sense. Sometimes, you may need to study more than just the sentence—you may need to read over the entire paragraph or think about the topic or main idea of the whole passage. In this case intractable seems to be a word that has something to do with “not being pulled,” which makes sense because the negotiations were stopped, so it seems that neither side could be “pulled” into an agreement.
Step 3: As an integral component of generative vocabulary instruction, be constantly on the lookout for meaningful key words, already known to students, that can be used as automatic problem-solving prompts. In our opening example, the familiar word convert is a valuable key word for students to use when analyzing new words that contain the root “vert.” Likewise, tractor (something that pulls) is a useful key word when analyzing any of the following more unfamiliar terms: traction, contracted, retraction, contractual, extractible, protracted, subcontractor, and so on.
When teaching a new word, Templeton recommends pairing it with the familiar key word as students examine it, to continually establish the strategy of using recognizable words as tools for developing meaningful hunches about words students may find challenging.
For example, notice how the meaningful key word fracture (to break) can be used as a tool to problem solve these more sophisticated forms: fractionate, fractious, refraction, fracas, infraction. Or how correct (right) can be paired when students learn rectify, rectitude, or rectangle. As students become practiced with using key words as a vocabulary analysis tool, ask them to identify their own key words that can signal possible meanings of future unknown words.
Notice that words with meaningful parts appear as key vocabulary in a wide variety of subject areas (referred to in previous Reading Room columns a Tier 3 words). For example, fractionate (as in a country fractionating) may surface in social studies texts. Refraction is a science concept, fraction a math concept, infraction a physical education concept, and fractious could be employed to describe a character in a short story or novel. It is therefore incumbent on all teachers to take advantage of the daily opportunities for generative vocabulary instruction in their curriculum.
Advantages
Previous columns have addressed the need for explicit vocabulary instruction, especially of Tier 2 (words not frequently heard in spoken language and regarded as “hard words” when students run into them in print) and Tier 3 words (content-specific vocabulary). Because a vast number of Tier 2 and 3 words are built from Latin and Greek roots, generative vocabulary instruction has substantial benefits.
Further Resources:
Templeton, S. (2008) Revolutionizing Vocabulary Instruction, Grades 4-12. Paper presented at the WSRA Convention, Milwaukee (February 8).
Doug Buehl, WEAC member, Madison
Wisconsin State Reading Association.
drbuehl@sbcglobal.net
Posted March 3, 2008