Building a Better Vocabulary

Five Principles for Learning Vocabulary. 1. Definitions 2. Context 3. Connections 4. Morphology/etymology 5. Sematic chunking

Definitions: Focus on rich meanings, not just dictionary definitions. Factotum- Someone hired to to a variety of jobs (Jack of all trades)

Put it into context: Tessa the office factotum, does the billing, answers the phones, fills in in the PR department and she even know how to bake a mean blueberry scone- she's indispensable.

Make connections to the word. Let's think of some examples of factotums in our own lives.

Etymology- the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.

Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes, like prefixes, suffixes and base words, are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning.

Myocarditis Myo- pertaining to muscle Cardi- pertaining to the heart itis- inflammation of Myocarditis- inflamed heart muscle

Semantic chunking involves taking the known word, and comparing the similarity of all similar words with each other, and then grouping these words together in memory. This can be done in several ways: by definition, by Etymology, or by category.

Factotum FAC- do or make FACtory- makes things ManuFACture- made by man FACilitate- to make easier. BeneFACtor. a person who helps people or institutions FACt- made' or 'done true

Totum- all, the whole TOTal- constituting the full quantity or extent TOTalitarian-characterized by a government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control TOTality- the state of being total and complete