Well over half of the words in the English language come from Greek or Latin. So you can see how useful it would be to teach at least the more common roots to students in order for them to best make sense of our language. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen. Teaching Greek and Latin roots is often associated with dry, rote activities that don’t feel meaningful for students, and aren’t linked to other parts of the curriculum. Students learn them in a vacuum, and therefore, often forget them.
While we can probably all agree that teaching these affixes has the potential for important and purposeful inclusion in a secondary literacy curriculum, many teachers leave it out. Sometimes this is because it simply feels like there’s no time. Sometimes it’s because they know rote memorization isn’t effective, but they don’t know how they should teach it.
Just like the old-school methods of vocabulary instruction, when Greek and Latin roots were a regular part of the classroom, they were often learned by rote. Students memorized word lists, studied flashcards, and demonstrated their recall on quizzes. We know now that these methods, when used exclusively, are not the best way to ensure meaningful student learning. But just as that doesn’t mean we stop teaching vocabulary, it also doesn’t mean that teaching Greek and Latin roots is any less important. It’s just a matter of developing instructional strategies that will help students remember this important information long-term, and make it relevant to the curriculum so that it doesn’t feel disjointed as this type of content often can.
What are Greek and Latin Roots?
First, it’s important to know that Greek and Latin roots and affixes are the building blocks of the English language. They are word parts (occasionally entire words) that carry their own meaning. Learning the parts of words improves students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension because when they learn what the word parts mean and can identify them in a text, they are much better able to derive the definition of unknown words.
Some Common Greek Roots:
auto (self, same)
bio (life)
dys (apart, not)
hypo (under, below)
micro (small)
mis (wrong, wrongly)
phobia (fear)
tele (far, far off)
Some Common Latin Roots:
aqua (water)
aud (hear, listen)
cent (hundred)
dict (say)
mal (bad)
multi (many)
vid (look, see)
voc (call)
Effective and meaningful strategies for teaching word roots:
Create a living, interactive collection. Have students keep their own by placing new words in a vocabulary notebook, with space for definition, examples of context, their own examples of words and sentences, etc., or have a class-wide collection posted on the wall.
Utilize scavenger hunts within class texts so that instead of isolated lists of roots, students are applying recently learned roots to the actual text they are reading. This presents opportunities for students to apply what they are learning by defining the words they have located within their text.
Link the words students are learning with actual Greek and Latin words and phrases containing them. Many students will know phrases like per se, pro bono, and ad lib. Point out that these are Latin phrases, and connect them to the roots they are learning.
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