Teach Your Students These 14 Words!
These words make all the difference because they are supposed to contain the twenty most useful prefixes, the fourteen most important roots, and are to be found in an estimated 100,000 words of an unabridged dictionary.
Precept: pre-and capere [Although cep, cip, ceiv, ceipt, and ceit are possible variant forms of capere, the most common form to note is cap].
Detain: de-and tenere [The various forms of tenere are ten, tain, and tin].
Intermittent: inter-and mittere [Other forms include mitt, mit, miss, mis, and mise].
Offer: ob-and ferre [Forms include fer and lat].
Insist: in-and stare [Forms include sta, stat, sti, and sist].
Monograph: mono-and graphein [Common forms include graph and gram].
Epilogue: epi-and legein [Forms include log, logy, logo, logue, and ology].
Aspect: ad-and specere [Forms include spec and spic].
Uncomplicated: un-, com-,and plicare [Forms include plic, plicat, plicit, pli, ply, plex, ple, pleat, play, ploy, and plicity]
Nonextended: non-, ex-,and tendere [Variant forms include tend, tent, and tens].
Reproduction: re-, pro-,and ducere [Although duit, duke, duct, duch, and duce are all possible derivatives of ducere, the most common form is duc].
Indisposed: in-, dis-,and ponere [The two most common three-letter combinations from ponere are pon and pos; with lesser used pound and post which should not be confused with the post that means “after, behind”].
Oversufficient: over-, sub-,and facere [Variant forms include fac, fact, fic, feat, feas, featur, and fair].
Mistranscribe: mis-, trans-,and scribere [Variant forms include scrib, scrip, scrip, and the less common scriv].
If you were to examine the 20,000 most used English words, you would find that about 5,000 of them contain prefixes and that 82 percent (about 4,100) of those words use one of only fourteen different prefixes out of all the available prefixes in the language. Below are these prefixes.
ab- (away from)
be- (on all sides, overly)
de- (reversal, undoing, downward)
dis-, dif- (not, reversal)
ex- (out of, former)
pre- (before)
re- (again, restore)
un- (do the opposite of)
ad- (to, toward)
com-, con-, co- (with, together)
en-, em- (in, into, to cover or contain)
in- (into, not)
pro- (in favor of, before)
sub- (under, beneath)
Teach your students these prefixes and words! Drill them hard, give tests, play vocabulary games using the words. Knowing these will certainly help any student who is studying to take tests like the TOEFL. For some good resources on putting together vocabulary quizzes and games check out this very useful ESL website http://www.englishmedialab.com/vocabulary.html.