English Morphology for the Language Teaching Profession

Laurie Bauer, I.S.P. Nation

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000033434
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This highly accessible book presents an overview of English morphology for all those involved in the English-language teaching industry. For non-native learners, the ability to recognize and produce new words in appropriate circumstances is a challenging task, and knowledge of the word-building system of English is essential to effective language learning. This book clearly explains the morphology of English from the point of view of the non-native learner and shows how teachers and professors can instruct EFL students successfully with effective materials.

Covering the scope of the task of teaching English morphology specifically to non-native learners of English, bestselling authors Bauer and Nation provide a range of strategies and tactics for straightforward instruction, and demonstrate how teachers of English as a foreign language can easily integrate learning of the morphological system into their language courses. This book helps teachers and learners make sensible decisions about where to focus deliberate attention, what to be careful about, and what not to be concerned about. It offers a range of shortcuts, tips and tricks for teaching, and gives detailed practical information on topics including:

• Sound and spelling
• Possessives
• Comparative and superlative
• Past tense and past participle
• Making nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and words with prefixes
• Learned word-formation.

This book is essential and practical reading for graduate students on English-language teaching courses, preservice teachers, consultants, practitioners, researchers and scholars in ELT.

1

LEARNING ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY

Native-speaking children learn new words at an amazing rate of around 1,000 word families a year. For non-native learners, being able to recognize and produce new words in appropriate circumstances is a much more challenging task. As with native speakers, non-native learners could use a number of strategies, from guesswork to overt requests for explanation. All such strategies are valuable. In this book we consider only one of these strategies, but one which has the potential to provide a large amount of support, and only for one language, namely exploitation of the morphological system of English. This means that we can provide no support in learning words such as dog, oak, elephant, satellite and tomato. These have to be guessed from context, recognized because of similarity to equivalent words in other familiar languages, or studied, or picked up by frequent exposure. But huge numbers of the words of English are not totally arbitrary, as these are. They are partly motivated, in that their structure reflects something of their meaning, and systematic exploitation of this motivation can ease the load of learning new vocabulary items. Some of the words whose structure leads to helpful clues are words which native-speaking children acquire in the first few years of life. Some are words which native speakers learn only when they get to secondary or tertiary education. The basic principles of morphological analysis are thus not principles which are useful only at one stage of language learning, nor are they principles which we can discard after we have used them to set up a few basic patterns. They are fundamental to the learning of new vocabulary throughout the learning experience, and need to be continually modified to take account of structures which have become newly relevant. That is what makes morphology, and morphological analysis, a tool of ongoing importance in language learning, even if it is not the only tool for learning new vocabulary.

1.1 Word Building

Young native speakers learn much of the morphological system of English largely without any direct instruction, and young learners of English as a second language who live and participate in the culture of an English-speaking country learn in much the same way. Learners of English as a foreign language however face a much more difficult learning task. The aim of this book is to show the scope of this task, to suggest a range of possible shortcuts, and to show teachers of English as a foreign language how to integrate learning of the morphological system into their language course.

1.2 The Scope of the Task

Every English sentence involves some use of the English morphological system, and one of the very important ways in which a learner’s vocabulary grows is through adding more members to existing word families. A word family consists of a base form (sometimes called a stem form) and its closely related inflected and derived forms which all build on the same core meaning of the base form. There are different levels of word families depending on the various prefixes and suffixes which are considered to be within the knowledge of language learners at certain proficiency levels. There is considerable debate about what level of word family best describes the proficiency level of various learners of English as a foreign language from different language backgrounds. This is because the definition of a word family needs to change as learners’ knowledge of the morphological system of English develops.

Bauer and Nation (1993), largely with learners of English as a foreign language in mind, set up a system of seven word family levels of cumulatively increasing size. The first six levels range from the most basic level, Level 1, where every word form is considered a different word, to Level 6 which includes all the inflections and a large number of derivational affixes which can be added to free bases. Level 7 includes classical roots and affixes which involve bound bases. Table 1.1 from Bauer and Nation shows these seven levels.

TABLE 1.1 A summary of Bauer and Nation’s (1993) seven word family levels

Level 1 A different form is a different word. Capitalization is ignored. Level 2 Regularly inflected words are part of the same family. The inflectional categories are – plural; third person singular present tense; past tense; past participle; -ing; comparative; superlative; possessive. Level 3 -able, -er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, un-, all with restricted uses. Level 4 -al, -ation, -ess, -ful, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ize, -ment, -ous, in-, all with restricted uses. Level 5 -age (leakage), -al (arrival), -ally (idiotically), -an (American), -ance (clearance), -ant (consultant), -ary (revolutionary), -atory (confirmatory), -dom (kingdom; officialdom), -eer (black marketeer), -en (wooden), -en (widen), -ence (emergence), -ent (absorbent), -ery (bakery; trickery), -ese (Japanese; officialese), -esque (picturesque), -ette (usherette; roomette), -hood (childhood), -i (Israeli), -ian (phonetician; Johnsonian), -ite (Paisleyite; also chemical meaning), -let (coverlet), -ling (duckling), -ly (leisurely), -most (topmost), -ory (contradictory), -ship (studentship), -ward (homeward), -ways (crossways), -wise (endwise; discussion-wise), anti- (anti-inflation), ante- (anteroom), arch- (archbishop), bi- (biplane), circum- (circumnavigate), counter- (counter-attack), en- (encage; enslave), ex- (ex-president), fore- (forename), hyper- (hyperactive), inter- (inter-African, interweave), mid- (mid-week), mis- (misfit), neo- (neo-colonialism), post- (post-date), pro- (pro-British), semi- (semi-automatic), sub- (subclassify; subterranean), un- (untie; unburden). Level 6 -able, -ee, -ic, -ify, -ion, -ist, -ition, -ive, -th, -y, pre-, re-. Level 7 Classical roots and affixes.

The levels are cumulative so that, for example, Level 3 includes not only the affixes introduced at Level 3 but also the inflections at Level 2. The levels are based on the criteria of frequency, regularity, productivity and predictability, so, for example, the affixes introduced at Level 4 are generally more frequent, regular, productive and predictable than those introduced at Level 5.

Table 1.2 contains some examples of different levels of word families based on the word bases teach (a verb) and eye (a noun).

TABLE 1.2 Examples of word families at different family levels

Level 2 families	Level 3 families	Level 6 family
teach taught teaches teaching teaching teachings teacher teachers teacherly untaught teachable unteachable	teach taught untaught teacher teacherly teachers teaches teaching teachings teachable unteachable	teach taught untaught teachable unteachable teacher teacherly teachers teaches teaching teachings
eye eyes eye eyes eyed eyeing eying eyeful eyefuls eyeless eyelet eyelets	eye eyes eyed eyeing eying eyeful eyefuls eyeless eyelet eyelets	eye eyes eyed eyeful eyefuls eyeing eying eyeless eyelet eyelets

At Level 2, the definition of a word family could require the base form and all the family members to be the same part of speech. This definition distinguishing parts of speech is called a lemma. A more inclusive definition at Level 2 would allow different parts of speech to be members of the same word family. So eye as a noun and eye as a verb could be counted in the same word family at Level 2 using the more inclusive definition. This type of family unit at Level 2 has been called a flemma following Pinchbeck (see Nation 2016: 26). In Table 1.2 we have used the narrower definition, teaching as a verb is listed separately from teaching as a noun. From Level 3 on, family members do not need to be the same part of speech. At Level 6 the related forms of teach make one family, but at Level 2 at the level of the lemma, the same forms make seven different families.

The idea behind the word family is that a family member should require no or little additional learning for it to be recognized as a member of the family, as long as the base or some of the other family members are known, and as long as the learner is familiar with the form and meaning of the prefixes and suffixes that are part of the particular family member. It should be obvious from this definition that what is seen as a family member depends on the learners’ knowledge of the morphological system.

The most useful way to decide what words to present in an English course involves dividing the words into levels based on their range and frequency of occurrence. Typically this has been done by organizing words into groups or levels of 1,000 word families. The most frequent 1,000 words cover around 85% of the running words in a text (Webb & Nation 2017), the second most frequent 1,000 around 5%, and so on with a smaller coverage for each successive 1,000 words. A set of frequency-based word lists called the BNC/COCA lists can be found on I.S.P Nation’s website: www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation.aspx.

Most English words can be seen as part of word families. A few high fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Notational Conventions
• PREFACE
• 1 LEARNING ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
• 2 ASSUMPTIONS
• 3 SOUND AND SPELLING
• 4 PLURALS OF NOUNS
• 5 THE POSSESSIVE
• 6 COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVE
• 7 THIRD PERSON SINGULAR -S
• 8 THE -ING FORM OF THE VERB
• 9 PAST TENSE AND PAST PARTICIPLE
• 10 NUMBERS
• 11 COMPOUNDS
• 12 MAKING NOUNS
• 13 MAKING VERBS
• 14 MAKING ADJECTIVES
• 15 MAKING ADVERBS
• 16 MAKING WORDS WITH PREFIXES
• 17 MAKING WORDS WITHOUT AFFIXES
• 18 LEARNED WORD-FORMATION
• 19 MORPHOLOGY AND FREQUENCY
• READING AND SOURCES
• INDEX OF AFFIXES AND OTHER BOUND ELEMENTS
• INDEX OF SUBJECTS