← 📝 English as a Second Language
Vocabulary and word formation
Building and using vocabulary accurately: word families, prefixes and suffixes, collocations, phrasal verbs and commonly confused words.
📌 Key points
- Words belong to word families: 'decide' (verb), 'decision' (noun), 'decisive' (adjective), 'decisively' (adverb).
- Common noun suffixes include -tion, -ment, -ness and -ity (education, improvement, happiness, ability).
- Common adjective suffixes include -ful, -less, -ous, -able and -ive (careful, careless, dangerous, comfortable, creative).
- Prefixes change meaning: un-, in-, im- and dis- often mean 'not' (unhappy, incorrect, impossible, dislike); re- means 'again'; mis- means 'wrongly'.
- Collocations are words that naturally go together: make a decision, do homework, take a photo, heavy rain, strong coffee.
- A phrasal verb is a verb plus a particle with its own meaning: put off (postpone), give up (stop), look after (take care of), find out (discover).
- Commonly confused words: affect (verb) / effect (noun); advice (noun) / advise (verb); lose (verb) / loose (adjective).
- Some nouns are uncountable and have no plural: information, advice, furniture, equipment, homework, luggage.
- Use fewer with countable nouns (fewer cars) and less with uncountable nouns (less traffic).
- Learn synonyms to avoid repetition and to understand paraphrase in reading, e.g. purchase = buy, require = need, enormous = very big.
📖 Key terms
- Word family
- A group of words that share the same root, such as 'create', 'creation', 'creative'.
- Prefix
- Letters added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning, such as 'un-' or 're-'.
- Suffix
- Letters added to the end of a word, often changing its word class, such as '-ment' or '-ful'.
- Collocation
- A natural combination of words, such as 'make a mistake'.
- Phrasal verb
- A verb + particle combination with its own meaning, such as 'give up'.
- Uncountable noun
- A noun with no plural form, such as 'advice' or 'furniture'.
- Synonym
- A word with the same or similar meaning to another word.
✏️ Worked example
Complete with the correct form of the word in brackets: 'The ___ (improve) in her English was obvious.'
- Look at the gap: it follows 'The' and comes before 'in', so a noun is needed.
- Find the word family: improve (verb), improvement (noun).
- The suffix -ment turns the verb into a noun.
- Check agreement: 'was' is singular, so the singular noun fits.
- Answer: The improvement in her English was obvious.
When you learn a new word, also learn its word class, its common collocations and other members of its family. This helps in both reading and writing.
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