Overview
It is very important to have a good vocabulary in order to do the amount and type of reading required in high school and college. Some strategies for building vocabulary include understanding root words, focusing on specialized vocabulary, and using a variety of reading skills to determine meaning.
Vocabulary
The English language is a hodgepodge of words borrowed from other languages, coined words, acronyms, and idioms. Sometimes, the same word will have different meanings depending upon how it is used within a sentence or phrase. Compare the difference of the word run between the sentences “He will run in a race”; “There was a run on the bank during the Great Depression”; and “She had a run in her stocking”. Many words have changed meaning over time. Hundreds of years ago, the word awful meant awe-inspiring, not horrible, and terrible had the connotation of fearsomeness rather than rottenness. Similarly, to call someone silly in Shakespeare’s time meant they were blessed, and to call them stupid meant they were amazed.
Root Words, Prefixes, and Suffixes
Root words give clues to the meanings of words, as do prefixes and suffixes. For example, the root –spect is from a Latin word meaning “to look”. Other related words include spectacle, inspect, spectator, and introspection. The prefix in + spect leads to a starting definition of looking into something, while the suffix –tor leads to a starting definition of one who looks. An actor is someone who acts, with a similar suffix.
Specialized Vocabulary
Each content area has words in common with others, but also has a specialized vocabulary. The words gravity, work, and force have a general meaning, as well as specialized definitions in physics. The word affect is a noun in psychology specifically referring to emotions. Elements are specific substances in chemistry. Reading and understanding texts in areas as diverse as English, mathematics, history, and the sciences depends upon adding those specialized word meanings and definitions to the vocabulary. As people move from novice to expert within a particular field, they become more comfortable with the many different instances and nuances of its specialized vocabulary.
Word Attack
Students in high school and college use many of the same reading skills to develop vocabulary as younger children, just at a more automatic level. A reader might first approach an unfamiliar word by guessing its meaning by the context of the passage around it. If the meaning isn’t immediately clear, the reader might break down the structure of the word into roots, prefixes, and suffixes, or sound it out syllable by syllable. The reader might check their understanding by using a dictionary or thesaurus as a starting point.
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