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Expanding Your Vocabulary

through Word Formation

Many students hate learning English, especially vocabulary. They hotel to form motel; and spoon and fork merge to form “spork”.
often think learning English is difficult. However, most English Last but not least is shortening. It includes two parts, clipping and
words have rules, and if we understand these rules, it is easier for initialism. When the word is too long, especially for us to read,
us to learn English. With this in mind, we invited Dr Charles Lam then we can cut it off. One example is “word-bus”. “Bus” was
from the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, to teach us more originally a French word, omnibus, but it was too long for us to
about these rules. Let’s have a look at what we learnt. say in our daily life, so we cut it down to “bus”. Of course, there
We started with inflection, a general grammatical process which are still many examples, such as lab, plane, and phone. The other
combines words and affixes. For example, “talk” can be changed part of shortening is initialism, which has two parts; one of them is
into different tenses, “talks”, “talked” and “talking”. It does not abbreviation, which means we only pronounce the letters in short
change the word class and meaning of the word. However, there form, such as WTO, BO, HSBC and VIP. We can’t pronounce them
are some exceptions, such as “I”, which can be changed into other as normal words. Another kind of initialism is acronyms, which we
forms like “me”, “mine” and “myself”. In this situation it changes can pronounce as words, such as NATO, RAM, UNESCO, and AIDS.
the word class. These are some examples of initialism.
Something else we learned about is derivation, which is a lexical By attending this event, I have improved my ability to use and
process that forms a new word out of an existing one by the understand words. Before that, I thought the only ways for us to
addition of a derivational affix. Most of the open class words have improve our vocabulary are to read more books and watch more
derivation except adverbs. For example, “beauty” can be changed English TV programs, because that was what I have been taught
into “beautify” and “beautiful”, but “beautifully” can’t be changed over the years. However, I recognized that if we know the meaning
into anything. Inflection and derivation can be used at the same of a word, then not only can I figure out its opposite meaning, but
time, just like “pay” can be changed into “payment”, and when we I can also discover more words that expand from it. I also learnt
add “s” to “payment”, it becomes “payments”. the pronunciations and meanings of some abbreviations, such as
Next up was compounds, which are words consisting of more than FYL and LOL. In my opinion, it is important for us to understand
one root, such as “riverside”, “basketball”, etc. It is important to the meaning of such abbreviations, or else, we may not use
pronounce compounds correctly as it could affect their meaning, them correctly. Dr. Lam shared an example in which someone
such as “black board” and “blackboard”. When looking at inflection misunderstood what LOL means, and posted it on the internet.
for compounds, only one constituent can be inflected in a word. Therefore, although there are certain words we must know in order
A good example is “bottle-necks”, which can’t be written into to get good marks in our exams, there are also other words that are
“bottles-necks”. very important since we may use them in our daily life.
Now let us look at conversions. These are words transferred to Expanding your vocabulary via rote learning is not an effective or
another word class, but without any concomitant change to its intelligent way to progress. I wonder how much time you would
form. For example, “to call (someone)” is a verb, but we can change need to remember every single word. We all know that it is
it to a noun phrase, which is “a call”; ‘a bottle’ is a noun, but we impossible. If you tried to do it, it would be the same as “eating a
can change it to the verb “to bottle”; “better” is an adjective, yet dictionary”, it is meaningless. Every English word has its own rule.
we can change it to “to better”, a verb. From the above examples, What you need to do is to learn all the rules, not remember all the
we can see that words can be changed to another word class. words. As a matter of fact, if you know the rules, you will discover
that language can be quite amusing, and that expanding your
Another trick for us to expand our vocabulary is blending. We vocabulary doesn’t have to be complicated. Maybe you will even
can build a new word by combining at least 2 words through this become addicted to it.
method. Some common examples that everyone should know or
should have heard of before are brunch, glamping, motel, and 4A Angel
spork. Brunch is a combination of breakfast and lunch; glamping 4A Joleen
combines glamorous and camping; we can combine motor and

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