Morphemic Analysis is sometimes referred to as “word part” clues. When our students anlayze the meaning of a word by breaking it down into recognizable parts, they are engaged in morphemic analysis.
What are morphemes?
Morphemes are smallest meaningful parts of words that combine to make words. We want students to know the meanings of these word-parts so that when they encounter these parts in unfamiliar words, they can use their knowledge of the parts to create meaning.
These parts are often classified by their origins. Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and Latin are the most common. We also teach cognates to English Language Learners (ELL), especially those students whose first language stems from latin, they can recognize parts of words in their first language when they read words that are the same or very similar to words in English that share the same roots. 75% of all Spanish words come from Latin and French, Portuguese are all Latin based. Overall, when students learn these word parts, or roots, their knowledge is generative, it generates new knowledge and helps students make connections between similar words (Nagy & Scott, 2000).
How does this help my teaching?
According to Nagy et al. (1989), over 60 percent of all the words your students will read have word parts they will be able to recognize if they are taught their meaning. This is especially true of content area vocabulary, science, math, and social studies. These words can be traced back to Latin and Greek vocabulary (Harmon, Hedric, and Wood, 2005).
If you infuse your content area instruction with these root words:
a) your students will be able to find meaning in the words that include these roots!
b) they can independently create meaning when they recognize the roots.
c) you spend less instructional time teaching each and every word they need to understand in your content.
What is a root?
A root is part of a word that has meaning. This is different from a phoneme, which is a unit of sound. Look at a root as a key, and having that key helps to unlock the meanings of many words. For example, if you know that -archy means leader, and you encounter matriarchy, patriarchy, anarchy, and oligorachy, you know that leader or first person is part of the meaning of these words. That’s a:
Prefix: a root at the beginning of a word.
Base: the core of the word
Suffix: root at the end
Free morphemes can stand alone and make meaning (mostly Anglo-Saxon)
Bound morphemes cannot stand alone and make meaning (mostly Greek and Latin)
How do we teach morphemic analysis?
Morphemic analysis instruction is typically explicit instruction on the meanings of roots through practice taking words apart to analyze their means according to the roots and putting roots together to create words. That means teaching the meanings of base roots, prefixes, and suffixes then engaging in using these.
The mistake many teachers make is in only having their students memorize the meanings of root words, then never explicitly demonstrating how these roots work together. This instruction is especially effective if students can apply the words they are
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