Vocabulary acquisition with affixation: Learning English words based on prefixes & suffixes

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate vocabulary learning. Non-native speakers have trouble in learning English word systems that have roots and standard rules for prefixes and suffixes that extend the way these core items are used. Therefore, I wanted to investigage which ways of studying vocabulary work best for non-native students: formally learning the underlying prefixes and suffixes or just incidentally learning without using the knowledge of affixation. This experiment was carried out over 10 weeks. Only10 minutes out of each 50-minute class were used for studying the English words that I selected. A total of 54 students took part in this experiment at a private English School in Korea. In the main experiment, the groups of students were organized into two groups: one group was scheduled to memorize English words using knowledge gained from their teachers’ affixation lectures, while the other group studied without instruction about affixation. The goal of the posttest was to determine how students acquired affixation patterns of English words and expanded their vocabulary knowledge and to investigate differences between the two groups. The assumption was that basic knowledge of commonly used affixes would help students learn English vocabulary much faster and avoid the need to repeatedly look up words.