Vocabulary Growth: Strategies for College Word Study - Softcover

Hennings, Dorothy Grant

9780130223265: Vocabulary Growth: Strategies for College Word Study

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130223263 ISBN 13: 9780130223265

Publisher: Pearson, 2000

A unique and practical word building primer that offers a strategic, word study approach to vocabulary development with an emphasis on helping users perceive connections among words and elements within words. The book and related exercises provide specific strategies for figuring out the meanings of unfamiliar words and discovering relationships among words based on the affixes and roots that comprise them. Provides strategies and exercises for understanding words through their origins, context clues and word elements including prefixes, suffixes and basic roots. For individuals with an interest in words and their development, as well as those wishing to build their vocabulary using a more productive, active and practical approach than memorization.

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From the Back Cover:

VOCABULARY GROWTH: STRATEGIES FOR COLLEGE WORD STUDY maintains a strategic approach to vocabulary development in which emphasis is not on the memorization of individual words and their definition, but on helping college students perceive connections among words and elements within words. The text's strength can be found in its chapter organization. Each chapter includes:

A statement of objectives at the start of the chapter.
A reading selection called "Interesting Words to Think About" which introduces words or a group of words that relates to the topic of the chapter.
"Strategy" boxes that help students develop techniques to wrest meanings from words.
Two modules, each presenting 12 to 15 new words that share a common feature.
A third module offering a reading selection about an aspect of word building or use that relates to the focus of the chapter.
A "Confusing Words" box which ends the chapter, addressing common problems such as it's and its, or eminent and imminent.

PREFACE

Purpose

The purpose of Vocabulary Growth: Strategies for College Ward Study is to provide you—college students, prospective college students, and vocational-career students—with strategies to get meaning from context clues and word elements and in the process build your vocabulary. A related purpose is to help you perceive that words are great subjects to investigate. When you become a student of language, delight in discovering word relationships, and become aware of how you can make words work for you, you are more likely to stop when you encounter an unfamiliar ward and consider its meaning. If you do this, you will became a master of wards and your vocabulary will grow.

Because of its purpose, Vocabulary Growth: Strategies for College Word Study differs from vocabulary-building texts in which the emphasis is an memorizing words and their definitions. In Vocabulary Growth emphasis is on perceiving meaningful elements within words, making connections among words, and searching for wards that are similar in same way. The aim is for you to develop strategies to conquer unfamiliar wards when you find them in your college textbooks and an your learning to make words work for you. In short, through this text you will became a student of words.

General Organization

Vocabulary Growth: Strategies for College Word Study comprises fourteen chapters. Chapters 1 and 2—Part I—focus on general vocabulary-building strategies related to dictionary use and the use of ward study notebooks and cards. Chapters 3 and 4—Part II—focus on strategies related to use of context clues. In addition, words featured in Parts I and II help you understand the most important sources of English words: words that language scholars trace back to Old English and to the Angla-Saxons—early invaders of the British Isles; words derived from Greek; words derived from Latin; and wards derived from French. Featured words also help you to review how wards in English function as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Readings relate to the history of English and explain the effects of an Anglo-Saxon migration, Greek myths, Latin legends, and a French invasion on Modem English. A supplementary skill taught in these chapters is the "Know-for-sure/Process-of-elimination" test-taking strategy that you will apply throughout the text as you complete related word study activities.

Chapters 5 through 7, grouped as Part III, introduce the importance of understanding word elements, or components. These chapters focus on basic prefixes, clarify strategies for working with prefixes, and feature words built from them. The readings in this block of chapters relate to prefixes and to ways in which new words enter the language—acronyms, modern-day coinages, and olden-day development of the calendar month names.

Chapters 8 through 10 (Part IV) offer strategies and word lists that help you work with word endings and begin to see words as units of meaning rather than strings of individual letters. The chapter readings expand your ability to perceive suffixes at the ends of words as well as your ability to spell words that incorporate suffixes.

Chapters 11 through 14 (Part V) focus on word-building roots and elements derived from Latin and Greek and help you visualize the basic structure of words by using word towers. Since many technical terms encountered in post-secondary school studies are constructed with these components, understanding of how to wrest meaning from them is vital for success in college, university, or advanced vocational-career programs. Readings in these chapters explain interesting ways in which writers use words and how words have developed: compound words, figurative language and cliches, professional jargon, literary allusion.

On the inside front cover of the text is an explanation of the symbols used in the text to indicate how to pronounce the featured words.

Features

Each chapter has these features:

A statement of objectives to be achieved listed in the order presented in the chapter.
An opening passage that introduces a word or group of words that relates in some way to the focus of the chapter and clarifies ideas about how words work. At the end of each passage is a segment called "Collaborative Search and Discover," which asks you to become a language investigator and think about word relationships.
One or two strategy boxes that explain strategies that help you to wrest meaning from words. In chapters that deal with prefixes, suffixes, or roots, a table summarizes the word elements taught in the segment.
Power words and expressions (with their derivations and pronunciations) as well as highlighted elements that are set off from the running text. These boxed segments add depth and breadth to your studies.
Two modules—Module A and Module B. Each presents from twelve to fifteen words shown with pronunciation clues, part of speech, definition, related words, and contexts that model how the word functions in sentences. With each list of words are three to six practice activities.
A final module. Module C offers a passage about an aspect of word building or use that relates to the focus of the chapter. In most instances, starting with Chapter 3, some words are presented in boldfaced type. In followup activities, you will have to explain the meanings of those words based on your growing ability to work with context clues and word elements.
Confusing words box. English is filled with troublesome words such as it's and its, eminent and imminent. At the end of each chapter, you will have the opportunity to clear up misunderstandings you may have about such words.

Acknowledgments

I send my thanks to Maggie Barbieri, former Senior Editor, English, at Prentice Hall, who encouraged me to do a vocabulary development text. Without a chance communication with her via the Internet, I would probably not have taken the plunge at this time and Vocabulary Growth would still be an idea in my mind rather than a book on paper. Similarly, I send my appreciation to Craig Campanella, who took over for Ms. Barbieri during production, to Joan Polk of Prentice Hall for her efficiency in handling all my communications and getting anwers to my questions; and to Marianne Hutchinson of Pine Tree Composition, who skillfully guided my book through production.

I also say, "Thank you," to the three reviewers who commented on the first draft and supplied suggestions to strengthen it: Janet Cutshall, Sussex County Community College; Sue Hightower, Tallahassee Community College; and Elizabeth Semtner, Rose State College. In my more than twenty-five years of writing college-level texts, I have found that the key to a strong book is a cadre of reviewers who generously share their ideas.

Above all and once again, I send my husband George my love for the many days he did the shopping and other household chores so that I could stay glued to my computer. I thank my husband, too, for his thoughtful reading of the successive drafts and for his suggestions that are always on the mark. I am blessed!

Dorothy Grant Hennings
Distinguished Professor, Kean University
Warren, New Jersey
dhennings@advanix.net

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